spin

There is a linguistic discipline these days called discourse analysis whose interest is how discourse works, how sentences can be related one to another to form complex thought. It notices markers in sentences which relate them to earlier or later ones.

Let me look at a few markers in AJ 18.3.4, which starts:

About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder

The two markers that interest me are 1) "the same time" and 2) "another sad calamity". These linkages are called anaphoric references because they point back to earlier material, ie at the same time as some already mentioned event, and another calamity like the one just mentioned. In this case both point back to another event which happened about the same time which was a calamity which put the Jews into disorder. We find the calamity in AJ 18.3.1-2 which deals with a sedition among the Jews ending with "a great number of them slain".

The beginning of 18.3.4 points straight back to 18.3.2 as though it followed directly after it, yet the infamous Testimonium Flavium now intervenes to disrupt the discourse linkage between the two sections of discourse. This is another telling indication that the TF was a total interpolation: it simply does not belong between the sedition of 18.3.1-2 and the "another sad calamity" which happened "about the same time" in Rome. The discourse flow from 18.3.2 to 18.3.4 is more coherent without the interruption of the TF.

While the TF could be stretched to contain an event which might fulfill the linkage to "at the same time", though the TF is more correctly a set introduction to Jesus that dealing with a particular event being referenced by "the same time" because it involves the full ministry of Jesus; nevertheless, the TF cannot be construed to be "another sad calamity" which happened to the Jews, especially when such a specific calamity comes right before it in 18.3.1-2.

So we have yet another indicator that the TF was not the work of Josephus.


spin

spin

Here is the relevant section if Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, 18.3.2-4:

Johann_Kaspar

Yep, another evidence of the interpolation. Thanks.
But what I am finding strange is that the TF in the AJ is discussed very often and in every detail while the other case in the JW is commonly left aside. I think that the xian scholars are feeling not at ease with an obvious case where the book was "mishandled".

rlogan

Well, I can hear the excuses being offered that the TF opens with ...About this time... and the next passage is "also" at about this time.

However the reading you have given it seems to fit better.

The other strange thing is how long and involved this story about Pauline is, whereas the Jesus story (despite the ten thousand wonderful things) is so short.

Son of god gets less press than the little hottie.

Layman

This is more a comment on Josephus' abilities as a writer than it is any serious objection to the TF. As Meier quotes Thackery, "Josephus was a patchwork writer." (John Meier, A Marginal Jew, page 86, fn. 54).

Furthermore:

(Shaye J.D. Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome, page 233).

Even Jeffrey Lowder, co-founder of the Secular Web, could "see no reason to believe the Testimonium occurs out of context." Even if it could be said to be out of context, Lowder remarks "that would still not make it likely that the passage is an interpolation. It was common for ancient writers to insert extraneous texts or passages which seemingly interrupt the flow of the narrative (whereas today the material would be placed in a footnote)."

So, we should not think it strange for any writer to refer back past what Lowder describes as a footnote. Given the digressive nature of the TF and the "inveterate sloppiness" of Josephus, requiring the literary precision you demand is unjustified.

spin

One needs to know something about discourse analysis. Yes, Josephus is a sloppy linker, but he supplies two discourse linkages here, making the effort to substantiate the connection. When he supplies them, they shouldn't be ignored. The TF clearly breaks the connection. A good indicator is that the linkage makes perfect sense without the TF, though with it the antecedent alluded to by the linkage is not apparent.


spin

The Evil One

spin - a good approach, but I think you would have to back it up with an analysis of large tracts of noncontroversial writing by Josephus, in the original language if possible, to show that such discourse jumps don't typically occur in sequences of passages other than the TF. If Josephus has "past form" of making such jumps - as the accusations of sloppy writing imply - in passages that are established to be "all his own work" then the presence of such a jump around the TF can't be used as evidence that it is an interpolation.

spin

I've had a relatively good look at how he uses similar expressions (with either chronos or kairos) and there are two basic cases, either they are general "I'm not really linking to anything precise" type expressions or, more usually, they follow hard on the antecedent event. The one we are looking at is clearly not a general way of continuing the narrative, but refers to a specific antecedent, given the phrase "another sad calamity".

Remember that I give this as just another pointer to the spurious nature of the TF. It is only recently in this more historically demanding age that scholars have gone back to the TF to redeem features of it, arbitrarily picking bits they can hold onto. This is done by taking out the stuff they are forced to remove: Josephus is not going to say baldly "he was the Christ", for example, and without that there is no antecedent for the xians named after him (ie no Christ), along with various other expressions like "principal men among us", and what is left, ie what is not forced to go, must therefore have been originally by Josephus. A "yeah, sure" bell should be ringing in your head at this stage.

It has been pointed out that the TF is reproduced first and complete in our trustworthy Eusebius, over two centuries after Josephus and many churchfathers well versed in Josephus know nothing of the TF, eg Origen, who knows a form of the James passage, is silent about this little jewel of information about Jesus. As Toto posted recently, Ken Olson has written a paper proposing that it was Eusebius who forged the TF.

An online source on Josephus shows several similarities with a passage from Luke, then unfortunately claims that Josephus used Luke as a source (!?), instead of the more obvious conclusion that the xian interpolater, be it Eusebius or not, cribbed from the Luke passage.

This new sifting through of the TF by xian apologists is probably a spin-off from the Jesus Seminar type approach of jettisoning what you have to up front and then rationalising what's left as genuine, as though such an approach were meaningful.


spin

The Evil One

Oh yeah, I utterly agree that the whole thing is likely a fake; it's just horribly difficult to demonstrate that this is the case, once the obviously-fake bits are taken out.

spin

What one usually does when one drops a sandwich on a dirty floor is to throw it out rather than pick the dirt out: how does one know what's left is clean? Would you eat it?

Once one has sufficient suspicion of the veracity of a text, the onus is on the redeemer to show that it is not totally tainted; they can't just say that they think the rest of the sandwich is clean. The arbitrariness of such a process should be unacceptible.


spin