spin

Pilate saying this has little significance in the passion play. He, not being a Jew, doesn't have to understand the term.

I've just been looking through examples in Josephus for the use of legomenos and it just seems to occur in regular naming structures, "John called Gaddis", "a garment called an ephod", etc. These are statements of how things are. Mt 1:16 has "Jesus called Christ". That is just as the writer claims it was.

I strongly doubt that, unless he included a rider saying that he really wasn't. In fact, Josephus, who claimed to be both a devout Jew and of a priestly family, doesn't talk about christs at all.

The phrase for me is a total interpolation as I argued here, so I can't assume Josephus wanted to refer to anyone but James in this passage.


spin

Amaleq13

Given the assumption, I would agree but I find the assumption highly questionable.

Origen makes it pretty clear, in the "lost reference" that James the Just was well known and respected enough that it was reasonable to think someone like Josephus might attribute the fall of Jerusalem to his murder. Within that context, it makes no sense whatsoever for Josephus to feel it necessary to identify James as the brother of an executed messianic claimant. Using "the Just" would clearly have been sufficient and adding such a dubious connection seems contrary to the alleged point of the passage (i.e. James was a great man whose murder was so heinous that Jerusalem fell).

Considering the extant reference, we have no reason to assume this is the same James except the phrase-in-question. If this is "the Just", then we are again dealing with an inexplicable choice by Josephus to identify a famous man by way of his lesser known, executed messianic-claimant brother. To top it off, he puts the reference to this convicted criminal before naming James. IMO, this only makes sense as a Christian interpolation. Perhaps only as an eventually included scribal margin note but Christian in origin nonetheless. If it is not "James the Just", and I suspect that might very well be the case, the phrase from the lost passage Origen mentions has simply been moved to refer to a different murdered guy by the same name.

The only way this mess makes sense to me is that we are dealing with two Christian scribes. I'm not sure whether we can assume Josephus made the James' murder = Jerusalem's fall connection but it might not be unreasonable. In that context, our first Christian scribe adds the reference to Jesus to identify James while the second takes exception to the context and removes the entire passage. He doesn't, however, want to eliminate a mention of Jesus in Josephus, so he moves the phrase to a different story where another guy named James is murdered

andrewcriddle

The question as to whether it is plausible that the James sentenced to death by Ananus was in the original text of Josephus the brother of Jesus, the son of Damneus, rather than the brother of Jesus known as Christ, is obviously related to whether or not the passage seems to refer to a conflict within the elite priestly families from whom high priests came, or to a conflict between the eilte priestly families and other groups.

The reference to Ananus's behaviour as an expression of Sadducaic attitudes suggests that this is a conflict between the elite priestly families (who would mostly have sympathized with Sadducaic views) and other groups (who would almost certainly have been non-Sadducaic).

Another indication is the place of the account in Josephus's narrative. As part of the process leading up to the war Josephus describes firstly a break down of relations between the elite priests and other groups and subsequently a break down of relations between factions among the elite priests The sentencing of James to death by Ananus occurs after the first breakdown but well before the second. If James was a senior priest, brother of a future high priest, then one would have expected either that the senior priests would have been described as splitting into factions before this with the condemnation of James as a consequence, or the sentencing of James and sacking of Ananus would have been described as causing such a split into factions.

As the narrative stands it hence seems unlikely that the James condemned by Ananus was a fellow member with Ananus of the senior priests.

Andrew Criddle

GakuseiDon

A nitpick: Josephus was writing around 90 CE for a Roman audience. By that time, the name "Christ" may have been well-known enough for the identification to be worthy of note.

Amaleq13

"may have been" based on what evidence?

As I already mentioned, our only other equally early non-Christian evidence (i.e. Pliny and Tacitus) hardly suggest that "Jesus called Christ" was a well known figure. Certainly not to the point that Josephus would find it helpful to additionally identify someone as apparently well known as James the Just. The other two don't exhibit any awareness of the name "Jesus" at all. In addition, how does dragging James down by associating him with an executed criminal work in the context of claiming that James was such a great man that his murder resulted in the fall of Jersualem?

andrewcriddle

I think it is most unlikely that Josephus believed that James was such a great man that his murder resulted in the fall of Jerusalem.

The real question is whether it is possible that Origen reading the present text of Josephus with Christian biases could have interpreted Josephus that way.

I think he might have. Shortly after the sentencing of James to death we have In its immediate context this seems to refer to the blurring of the ritual difference between priests and levites. However Origen is unlikely to have read Josephus as meaning that these ritual errors caused the fall of Jerusalem and I doubt if that was what Josephus meant. What Josephus IMO meant to imply was that the fall of Jerusalem resulted from general lawlessness by High Priests Priests and Levites of which the sentencing of James is just one of a number of examples, others being the ritual errors of the Levites and the feuding of the priests with each other and with the general public.

However given that a Christian tradition of linking the fall of Jerusalem to the murder of James probably already existed, and given the explicit reference in Josephus to the condemnation of James as in breach of the Law, Origen might well have understood the reference to punishment for transgression of the Law as applying specifically to the condemnation of James.

If Origen did understand Josephus like this then he was misunderstanding him but IMHO it would be quite a plausible misunderstanding, and it avoids postulating a text of Josephus used by Origen with an addition not in any surviving manuscript.

Andrew Criddle

Amaleq13

I doubt I'm familiar enough with either to judge but your hypothetical seems reasonable to me. If I understand you correctly, the status of James is ultimately irrelevant and it could very well be a different man altogether except for the phrase in question. And that phrase still seems to me to be more likely a case of incorporated scribal gloss than something written by Josephus.

The "lost passage" creates a lot of difficulties regardless of one's position so finding a way to get rid of it can only simplify matters. But what about Hegesippus? Doesn't he mention the same passage? Has he misinterpreted Josephus as well?

Vorkosigan

I agree. That interpretation does make a lot of sense.

GakuseiDon

We have letters being written to the Emperor Hadrian around 120 CE that mention Jesus, which shows an awareness. I can't see how "Jesus called Christ" is such a stretch by 90 CE.

It doesn't need to be. Josephus is mentioning "Christ" to: (1) distinguish which James it is, (2) add details that his Roman audience would be familiar with. Why should Josephus try to hide it?

andrewcriddle

Hegesippus according to Eusebius has an account of the death of James that appears independent of Josephus.

Eusebius presents his equivalent of Origen's statement about Josephus as a direct quote from Josephus. (Ecclesiastical History Book 2) Most scholars hold that Eusebius is dependent on Origen here and (whether or not with deliberate intention to mislead) has converted a dubious paraphrase of Josephus by Origen into a bogus direct quote from Josephus.

Andrew Criddle