Freethought & Rationalism Archive

stephan huller · 07-20-2012, 11:48 AM

I have always been intrigued by this layering in the Latin Hegesippus text:

They indeed paid the punishments of their crimes, who after they had crucified Jesus the judge of divine matters, afterwards even persecuted his disciples. However a great part of the Jews, and very many of the gentiles believed in him, since they were attracted by his moral precepts, by works beyond human capability flowing forth. For whom not even his death put an end to their faith and gratitude, on the contrary it increased their devotion. And so they brought in murderous bands and conducted the originator of life to Pilatus to be killed, they began to press the reluctant judge. In which however Pilatus is not absolved, but the madness of the Jews is piled up, because he was not obliged to judge, whom not at all guilty he had arrested, nor to double the sacrilege to this murder, that by those he should be killed who had offered himself to redeem and heal them. About which the Jews themselves bear witness, Josephus a writer of histories saying, that there was in that time a wise man, if it is proper however, he said, to call a man the creator of marvelous works, who appeared living to his disciples after three days of his death in accordance with the writings of the prophets, who prophesied both this and innumerable other things full of miracles about him from which began the community of Christians and penetrated into every tribe of men nor has any nation of the Roman world remained, which was left without worship of him. If the Jews don't believe us, they should believe their own people. Josephus said this, whom they themselves think very great, but it is so that he was in his own self who spoke the truth otherwise in mind, so that he did not believe his own words. But he spoke because of loyalty to history, because he thought it a sin to deceive, he did not believe because of stubbornness of heart and the intention of treachery. He does not however prejudge the truth because he did not believe but he added more to his testimony, because although disbelieving and unwilling he did not refuse. In which the eternal power of Jesus Christ shone bright because even the leaders of the synagogue confessed him to be god whom they had seized for death. And truly as god speaking without limitation of persons or any fear of death he announced also the future destruction of the temple. But the damage of the temple did not move them, but because they were chastized by him in scandal and sacrilege, from this their wrath flared up that they should kill him, whom no ages had held. For while others had earned by praying to do what they did, he had it in his power that he could order all things what he wished to be done. John the Baptist a holy man, who never placed the truth of salvation in second place, had been killed before the death of Jesus. Finally to all things which he taught to be full of righteousness, with which he invited the Jews to the worship of god, he had instituted baptism for the sake of purification of mind and body. For whom freedom was the cause of his death, because he was unable, the law having violated of the right of fraternal marriage, to endure the wife abducted from a brother by Herod. For when this same Herod was travelling to Rome, having entered the house of his brother for the purpose of lodging, the wife to whom was Herodias the daughter of Aristobolus, [p. 165] the sister of king Agrippa, unmindful of nature he dared to solicit her, that the brother having been left behind she should marry him, when he had returned from the city of Rome, with the consent of the woman an agreement of lewdness having been entered into information of which thing came to the daughter of king Areta still remaining in marriage of Herod. She indignant at her rival insinuated to her returning husband that he should go to the town Macherunta which was in the boundaries of king Petreus and Herod. He who suspected nothing, at the same time because he had impaired the whole state around the same, by which he could more easily keep the faith of the agreement to Herodias if he should get rid of his wife, agreed to her diversion. But she when he came near to her father's kingdom revealed the things learned to her father Areta, who by an ambush attacked and completely destroyed in a battle the entire force of Herod, the betrayal having been made through those, who from the people of Philippus the tetrarch had associated themselves to Herod. Whence Herod took the quarrel to Caesar, but the vengeance ordered by Caesar the anger of god took away, for in the very preparation of war the death of Caesar was announced. And we discover this assessed by the Jews and believed, the author Joseph a suitable witness against himself, that not by the treachery of men but by the arousing of god Herod lost his army and indeed rightly on account of the vengeance of John the Baptist a just man who had said to him: it is not permitted you to have that wife. But we construe this thusly as if in their own people the Jews preserved their lawful rights, among whom the power of the high priest had perished and the avarice of those killed and the arrogance of the powerful, who thought the right to do what they wished was permitted to them. For from the beginning Aaron [p. 166] was the chief priest, who transmitted to his sons by the will of god and a lawful anointing the prerogative of the priesthood, by whom by the order of succession are constituted those exercising the chief command of the priesthood. Whence by the custom of our fathers it became valid for no one to become the foremost of the priests, unless he was from the blood of Aaron, to whom the first law of this method of the priesthood was entrusted. It is not permitted to succeed to a man of another descent even if a king. Finally Ozias, because he seized the office of the priesthood, overspread with leprosy ejected from the temple, he spent the rest of his life without authority. And without doubt he was a good king, but it was not permitted to him to usurp the office of religion.

stephan huller · 07-20-2012, 11:50 AM

I think this sort of layering is key. I wonder if our text of Josephus is an ancestor of a 'self-conscious' second century text which knew the lost hypomnema but was written by a synergoi with this perspective. Clearly this is not the second century text. I wonder whether the third person Josephus references were written by a similarly removed guy rather than Josephus.

stephan huller · 07-20-2012, 11:52 AM

No mention of Jesus as the Christ. Hegesippus here likely knows the original Testimonium

maryhelena · 07-20-2012, 11:54 AM

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/he..._00_eintro.htm

Quote:

Ps.Hegesippus, translated from Latin into English (2005). Preface to the online edition

There is a Latin text extant in numerous medieval manuscripts under the title of De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae (On the ruin of the city of Jerusalem) or Historiae (History). The text is an original composition which borrows very heavily from the Jewish War of Josephus, and is sometimes considered as a free translation and rearrangement of that work.

The author is given in the manuscripts sometimes as Hegesippus -- which may be a corruption of Iosippus, the spelling of Josephus in many of the manuscripts. In other manuscripts it is ascribed to Ambrose of Milan, and indeed is sometimes transmitted to us together with some of his works. Scholars have sometimes attributed the work to him; others to Isaac, a Jewish convert active in Roman ecclesiastical politics in the 370's. Most scholars today consider the work anonymous, and by convention refer to it as Pseudo-Hegesippus. It should not be confused with the Latin translation of the Jewish War made by Rufinus, which is more literal and arranged in seven books, and was made later. It has nothing to do with the lost works of the second-century writer Hegesippus mentioned by Eusebius.

Roger PEARSE
Ipswich, 2005.

my bolding

stephan huller · 07-20-2012, 12:27 PM

It's not just convention and besides it's convention to think that what we have is 'Josephus.' Look at the manner in which references to 'Christ' have been added to the testimony about Jesus.

stephan huller · 07-20-2012, 12:32 PM

The name is based on an error. In the manuscripts of the work "Iosippus" appears quite regularly for "Josephus". It has been suggested that from a corruption of Iosippus an unintelligent reviser derived Hegesippus. A more probable explanation is that the work was mistaken for the lost history of the Greek Christian author Hegesippus, which was also composed in five books. In some manuscripts, the author is said to be Ambrose of Milan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Hegesippus

stephan huller · 07-20-2012, 12:35 PM

I used to go to York University when Steve Mason taught there and sort of hung out with him debating about stupid things in his office for a week in my life. I didn't even know he was this authority on Josephus. Just a big stupid looking lug, I thought - more of a jock than a professor. Anyway, it is interesting to note that he mentioned something that always stuck with me, that it isn't just that Josephus IN OUR GREEK TEXT speaks about himself in the third person but also the 'the Jews' which Mason thought odd for a Jew writing a Jewish history.

maryhelena · 07-20-2012, 12:40 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Hegesippus

Quote:

Pseudo-Hegesippus is a conventional title for a fourth-century adaptor of the Jewish War of Flavius Josephus.

Although the author is sometimes termed a "translator", he never makes a claim to be translating either literally or freely. Rather, he considered himself an historian who used Josephus as his main source. The work is certainly too free to be considered a translation, as he frequently paraphrases and abridges. In addition, he adds passages based on other sources. As a whole it suggests the work of a rhetorician.

stephan huller · 07-20-2012, 12:43 PM

Just to make clear to everyone. The structure of the Latin Hegesippus is that of another author - not Josephus the Jew - who tells the story of the Jewish War and Josephus in the third person. He is a Christian. There are no examples of the author saying 'I am Josephus the first century Jew.'

So you have this 'pure' third person narrative by someone named Josephus who is a Christian and then there our text of Jewish War clearly written by Jewish Josephus of the first century mostly in the first person but with parallel third person sections as in Hegesippus - i.e. War 2:568, 569, 575, 585, 590, et passim. How the hell did this get constructed? I ain't ever heard of someone deciding to imitate Thucydides for a fucking section and then drift back to first person. That's a barbarism if I have ever seen one.

Yet on top of this there is this related but ultimately independent tradition by a Christian named Josephus where everything is in the third person. Odd.

Duke Leto · 07-20-2012, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Admit that the plain meaning of Clement's text is that he understood flavius josephus to have drawn a chronology from moses to david to the tenth year of antoninus and we can move on where ever you'd like - or alternatively provide a BETTER explanation

OK Stephan. LAST CHANCE to make it look like you're arguing in good faith.

For something like the FIFTH time, what is wrong with this scenario for the Clement text?

Josephus (with his Synergoi) writes the accepted Greek Text without the Testimonium or the "Brother of Jesus" interpolation circa 85 CE.
An actual Hellenized Christian writer, Jewish convert or no, named Hegesippus uses Josephus as a source for his chronicle's chronology to 147 CE, extending Josephus's chronology by 77 years to do it. (And apparently corrupts the chronology still further by garbling the numbers in the Greek Text, assuming the not unreasonable scenario that the numbers became garbled in the course of the number of copies made between the original and the manuscript isn't the case.)
Hegesippus credits Josephus, perhaps without mentioning that the 77 years bit is his insertion.
Epiphanus quotes Hegesippus' chronology, correctly attributing it to Hegesippus.
Clement quotes Hegesippus' chronology, crediting the entire chronology to Josephus, which he could easily have done if Hegesippus had not made it clear that the 77 years part was his addition.
Centuries later the Pseudo-Hegesippus was foisted off as Josephus, but was labeled as Hegesippus by a Christian librarian who was confused by the similar names and aware that Hegesippus wrote a history but not that Josephus did.

Prove it can't have happened that way.

And please don't circle back to Hegesippus having to be a spurious name because we have authenticated records of the 4th Century BCE Athenian Hegesippus (which you haven't acknowledged either).

Over and over again when I've presented alternative interpretations and presented you with serious difficulties your theory MUST explain away, your response seems to have been to pretend I've never done so, as evidenced by the above quote.

You'll be able to convince some people with that kind of behavior outside of scholarly circles, but if you want to be anything more than a crackpot, you need to man up and respond to things that don't fit your theory.

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07-20-2012, 11:48 AM	#301
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	I have always been intrigued by this layering in the Latin Hegesippus text: They indeed paid the punishments of their crimes, who after they had crucified Jesus the judge of divine matters, afterwards even persecuted his disciples. However a great part of the Jews, and very many of the gentiles believed in him, since they were attracted by his moral precepts, by works beyond human capability flowing forth. For whom not even his death put an end to their faith and gratitude, on the contrary it increased their devotion. And so they brought in murderous bands and conducted the originator of life to Pilatus to be killed, they began to press the reluctant judge. In which however Pilatus is not absolved, but the madness of the Jews is piled up, because he was not obliged to judge, whom not at all guilty he had arrested, nor to double the sacrilege to this murder, that by those he should be killed who had offered himself to redeem and heal them. About which the Jews themselves bear witness, Josephus a writer of histories saying, that there was in that time a wise man, if it is proper however, he said, to call a man the creator of marvelous works, who appeared living to his disciples after three days of his death in accordance with the writings of the prophets, who prophesied both this and innumerable other things full of miracles about him from which began the community of Christians and penetrated into every tribe of men nor has any nation of the Roman world remained, which was left without worship of him. If the Jews don't believe us, they should believe their own people. Josephus said this, whom they themselves think very great, but it is so that he was in his own self who spoke the truth otherwise in mind, so that he did not believe his own words. But he spoke because of loyalty to history, because he thought it a sin to deceive, he did not believe because of stubbornness of heart and the intention of treachery. He does not however prejudge the truth because he did not believe but he added more to his testimony, because although disbelieving and unwilling he did not refuse. In which the eternal power of Jesus Christ shone bright because even the leaders of the synagogue confessed him to be god whom they had seized for death. And truly as god speaking without limitation of persons or any fear of death he announced also the future destruction of the temple. But the damage of the temple did not move them, but because they were chastized by him in scandal and sacrilege, from this their wrath flared up that they should kill him, whom no ages had held. For while others had earned by praying to do what they did, he had it in his power that he could order all things what he wished to be done. John the Baptist a holy man, who never placed the truth of salvation in second place, had been killed before the death of Jesus. Finally to all things which he taught to be full of righteousness, with which he invited the Jews to the worship of god, he had instituted baptism for the sake of purification of mind and body. For whom freedom was the cause of his death, because he was unable, the law having violated of the right of fraternal marriage, to endure the wife abducted from a brother by Herod. For when this same Herod was travelling to Rome, having entered the house of his brother for the purpose of lodging, the wife to whom was Herodias the daughter of Aristobolus, [p. 165] the sister of king Agrippa, unmindful of nature he dared to solicit her, that the brother having been left behind she should marry him, when he had returned from the city of Rome, with the consent of the woman an agreement of lewdness having been entered into information of which thing came to the daughter of king Areta still remaining in marriage of Herod. She indignant at her rival insinuated to her returning husband that he should go to the town Macherunta which was in the boundaries of king Petreus and Herod. He who suspected nothing, at the same time because he had impaired the whole state around the same, by which he could more easily keep the faith of the agreement to Herodias if he should get rid of his wife, agreed to her diversion. But she when he came near to her father's kingdom revealed the things learned to her father Areta, who by an ambush attacked and completely destroyed in a battle the entire force of Herod, the betrayal having been made through those, who from the people of Philippus the tetrarch had associated themselves to Herod. Whence Herod took the quarrel to Caesar, but the vengeance ordered by Caesar the anger of god took away, for in the very preparation of war the death of Caesar was announced. And we discover this assessed by the Jews and believed, the author Joseph a suitable witness against himself, that not by the treachery of men but by the arousing of god Herod lost his army and indeed rightly on account of the vengeance of John the Baptist a just man who had said to him: it is not permitted you to have that wife. But we construe this thusly as if in their own people the Jews preserved their lawful rights, among whom the power of the high priest had perished and the avarice of those killed and the arrogance of the powerful, who thought the right to do what they wished was permitted to them. For from the beginning Aaron [p. 166] was the chief priest, who transmitted to his sons by the will of god and a lawful anointing the prerogative of the priesthood, by whom by the order of succession are constituted those exercising the chief command of the priesthood. Whence by the custom of our fathers it became valid for no one to become the foremost of the priests, unless he was from the blood of Aaron, to whom the first law of this method of the priesthood was entrusted. It is not permitted to succeed to a man of another descent even if a king. Finally Ozias, because he seized the office of the priesthood, overspread with leprosy ejected from the temple, he spent the rest of his life without authority. And without doubt he was a good king, but it was not permitted to him to usurp the office of religion.

07-20-2012, 11:50 AM	#302
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	I think this sort of layering is key. I wonder if our text of Josephus is an ancestor of a 'self-conscious' second century text which knew the lost hypomnema but was written by a synergoi with this perspective. Clearly this is not the second century text. I wonder whether the third person Josephus references were written by a similarly removed guy rather than Josephus.

07-20-2012, 11:52 AM	#303
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	No mention of Jesus as the Christ. Hegesippus here likely knows the original Testimonium

07-20-2012, 12:27 PM	#305
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	It's not just convention and besides it's convention to think that what we have is 'Josephus.' Look at the manner in which references to 'Christ' have been added to the testimony about Jesus.

07-20-2012, 12:32 PM	#306
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	The name is based on an error. In the manuscripts of the work "Iosippus" appears quite regularly for "Josephus". It has been suggested that from a corruption of Iosippus an unintelligent reviser derived Hegesippus. A more probable explanation is that the work was mistaken for the lost history of the Greek Christian author Hegesippus, which was also composed in five books. In some manuscripts, the author is said to be Ambrose of Milan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-Hegesippus

07-20-2012, 12:35 PM	#307
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	I used to go to York University when Steve Mason taught there and sort of hung out with him debating about stupid things in his office for a week in my life. I didn't even know he was this authority on Josephus. Just a big stupid looking lug, I thought - more of a jock than a professor. Anyway, it is interesting to note that he mentioned something that always stuck with me, that it isn't just that Josephus IN OUR GREEK TEXT speaks about himself in the third person but also the 'the Jews' which Mason thought odd for a Jew writing a Jewish history.

07-20-2012, 12:43 PM	#309
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Just to make clear to everyone. The structure of the Latin Hegesippus is that of another author - not Josephus the Jew - who tells the story of the Jewish War and Josephus in the third person. He is a Christian. There are no examples of the author saying 'I am Josephus the first century Jew.' So you have this 'pure' third person narrative by someone named Josephus who is a Christian and then there our text of Jewish War clearly written by Jewish Josephus of the first century mostly in the first person but with parallel third person sections as in Hegesippus - i.e. War 2:568, 569, 575, 585, 590, et passim. How the hell did this get constructed? I ain't ever heard of someone deciding to imitate Thucydides for a fucking section and then drift back to first person. That's a barbarism if I have ever seen one. Yet on top of this there is this related but ultimately independent tradition by a Christian named Josephus where everything is in the third person. Odd.

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