jgoodguy

I am not aware of any evidence of Josephus popularity among pagan Romans good or bad. It is reasonable that he was popular among the educated elites, and unknown among the uneducated. That reasoning would also apply to Christians: Only apologists and other defenders of the orthodox would give a hoot.

Indeed interpolations and errors can creep in with each and every copy. Proving where it happened is a challenge.

TedM

Ok, just wondering if books written for Romans would have gotten into the hands of Christians AND interpolated by at least one of them by 150AD, the outer date Doherty gives for a christian interpolation of the lost reference to James.

ApostateAbe

We can talk about the issues politely and directly. If you think that the passage was interpolated, then I think you need a very good reason for it, and it is not enough to say that "Sometimes, Christians used the same phrase." The proposition is not about a general Christian, but specifically a Christian interpolator. We already know what the language looks like when a Christian interpolates Josephus. The known interpolation reads, "He was the Christ." That is what a Christian interpolator would be plainly interested in having Josephus claim.

Toto has a perceived solution to that problem--Toto claims that it was a marginal scribal note of a Christian, not an intended interpolation, that was afterward incorporated into the text by the next scribe. That would mean that the proposed Christian author of "called Christ" would be writing from his own explicit perspective, not from the imagined perspective of Josephus. There are three places in all of the gospels where "called Christ" is used--Matthew 27:17, Matthew 27:22, John 4:25--and two of the three are quotes that speak from the imagined perspective of an outsider to the Christian cult. That is because we don't expect Christians to use the phrase "called Christ" when writing from their own explicit perspective. They would use simply, "Christ," or "Jesus Christ." That is how the gospels and Paul very typically wrote.

So, one way or the other, we do not expect an interpolator to use "called Christ." However, we would much expect an outsider to use such language, especially a Jewish outsider. If the popular culture identifies a certain "Jesus" as "Christ" or some variation, as we know from Pliny, Suetonius and Tacitus, but Josephus believes that is not the proper title for someone he believed was not actually the messiah, then we would expect him to use the phrase, "called Christ," not "Jesus Christ."

Disputes over interpolations and bizarre interpretations happen whenever someone has an unlikely model of history and he or she needs to fit the evidence to the model. Again, why not accept that Josephus actually wrote that? What is so improbable about that?

Toto

I don't think you have done a good job of imagining what an interpolator would have written, as opposed to an outsider.

"Jesus called Christ" is not a phrase that we have in any record of any Jewish writer. It is a phrase that a Christian writer used as if Pilate had spoken it - and Pilate was later turned into close to a saint by Christians. Once it is in the gospels, Origen repeats it.

Actual outsider references to Jesus:

"Jesus, a bastard" from Origen, Contra Celsum 1.28

"This is your carpenter's son, your harlot's son; your Sabbath-breaker, your Samaritan, your demon-possessed!" from Tertullian, De Spetaculis 100.30

ApostateAbe

Toto, would you expect Josephus to use that same language when writing about Jesus? If so, and you think that Josephus in the late 1st century should be expected to use the same language about Jesus as Jews in the mid 3rd century, then I think you should justify yourself. If not, then tell me what language you would expect from Josephus and why.

aa5874

Again, you are not making much sense.

An interpolator, Christian or not, will carry out the forgery in such a manner that it would NOT be easily detected.

Anyone familiar with the writings of Josephus will realize that he used the phrase "was called" perhaps over 60 times.

An interpolator, Christian or not, MUST be familiar with the style and words of Josephus in order to effectively interpolate his writings.

In the very "Antiquities of the Jews" 20, Josephus used the phrase "was called" multiple times.

"Antiquities of the Jews" 20.6 "Antiquities of the Jews" 20.8"Antiquities of the Jews" 20.8

Toto

I would expect a Jew to use terms that are derogatory and not neutral.

One of the first attempts to reconstruct the original language of the Testimonium was by Robert Eisler. He assumed that the section must have said something quite insulting about Jesus:

hjalti

Wait a minute. Mt 1.16 is written from a Christan perspective. It uses "called Christ". So we can expect a Christian to write like that, don't we?

Wait, so if we have an interpolation, all other interpolations must sound exactly the same? If chapter 21 in the gospel of John doesn't sound like the Pericopa adulterae, then it isn't a later addition!

Suetonius does no such thing.
I don't think that it's especially improbable, but I think the passage is suspect, since we know Christians tampered with Josephus and there are some valid arguments that cast doubt on the passage (e.g. Josephus seems to avoid to talk about the messiah, but here it is, and it's calling Jesus Christ).

ApostateAbe

Toto, I would like you to be specific and give me an example of the sort of statement that you would more expect of Josephus to use for Antiquities 20, if not "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James." Like for example, maybe you would find this phrasing to be more probable:

"the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, but he was not the Christ but a fraud, whose name was James."

That probably is not the phrasing that you would find more probable, so give me your own. You seem to have weakened your case with your expectations about the Testimonium Flavianum. I don't much disagree with it, though maybe the reconstruction is too much in the extreme--Josephus goes easy on his descriptions of a historical figure whose founding movement he has explicit reason to hate--Judas the Galilean (worth a look over). But, regardless, the thing is: if Josephus really dishes it out against Jesus in the TF, then why would he dish it out against Jesus a second time in that part of Antiquities 20, where Jesus is merely used as an identifier for some other guy who had a passing unfortunate involvement in Temple politics? Wouldn't Josephus dishing it out against Jesus in Antiquities 20 be a distraction?

Toto

Moving the goal posts, are you?

I would not expect Josephus to identify James by his brother, and the language in that section is already convoluted. I suspect the section originally read James the brother of Jesus the son of Damneus.

But assuming that Josephus wanted to identify James by his brother the failed pretender, I would not expect the language to be Jesus called Christ. Perhaps it would be Jesus the crucified, or Jesus the Mamzer, son of Pantera.

If we had any actual examples of Jews discussing Jesus from that era, we might know more.