Toto

You know that you can edit the Wikipedia entry, or one of your friends.

Unbeliever

It seems to be that as soon as something is labeled a "conspracy theory" it is rejected out of hand as not being worth the trouble to even consider, as though there have never actually been any conspiracies. On the contrary, there have been a multitude of conspiracies in the long history of intrigue. Assuredly, there have been many spurious claims of conspiracy, but that is no reason to spurn without examination every idea that meets the definition of the word.

John Deere

Unbeliever,

Right you are and Caesar's Messiah will, I expect, suffer many ad hominen critques that dismiss it as another misguided conspiracy theory. I wish they were right. I am mainly a social conservative with no agenda against Christainity. On the contrary, I see secular society, in its present form, as unsustainable. But truth is a whole.

Unbeliever

I have access at my local library to both the Whiston translation and a 1982 translation by Gaalya Cornfeld (gen. ed.) and Benjamin Mazar and Paul L Maier (consult. eds.). This one reads as follows:

The seven who were left to the end

(398)They had died in the belief that they had no living soul to fall into Roman hands; (399)but an old woman, along with another who was a relative of Eleazar and superior in intelligence and education to most women, with five little children had escaped and concealed themselves in the underground aquaducts[c], while the rest were occupied with their suicide. (400)The victims numbered nine hundred and sixty, including the women and children. (401)This tragedy took place on the fifteenth of the month Xanthicus[d].


So, according to this translation it was the victims, not including the surviving women and children, who were included among the 960. I don't see how it could be read any differently.

Unbeliever

The aforementioned Paul L. Maier, PhD, Litt. D., wrote the introduction to the Whiston translation I have access to ( The New Complete Works of Josephus, Kegel Publications, 1999), and in it he states:


"In the Greek version of The Jewish War, Josephus had a gentile readership in mind, as is obvious in his explaining such Jewish institutions as Passover, Pentecost, and other festivals. To such Greek and Roman readers he portrayed the Jews as peace-loving people, not insurrectionists, who were misled by a small number of insurgent Zealots and should therefore not be branded with any "war guilt" or misunderstood as rebels. The Greek edition, however, also targeted a general Jewish readership, since a majority of Jews in the mediteranean world were Greek speaking. To them Josephus portrayed God as moving over to the Roman side in the war as punishment for the evils inflicted on the Jews by their Zealot leaders."


It seems to me that this falls right in line with the NT propensity to be pro-Roman in its overall outlook. Has anyone ever composed a list of all of the Roman friendly (or otherwise) passages and verses in the NT, or will I have to compile such a list myself? It's not that I'm lazy, but if it's already been done I'd just be repeating someone else's work. But if it in fact hasn't been done, then I'm looking forward to an interesting project!

John Deere

Unbeliever:

I am sorry but the word "sunarithmeô" in the sentence at issue clearly indicates that the women and the children are to be taken into the "enumeration" that leads to the number 960. The word "victim" does not appear in the sentence and is simply an attempt by a translator to render what he or she thought was the gist.

The a better (more literal) translation would be:

"Those others were nine hundred and sixty in number, the women and children being included in that computation."

"hoi ton arithmon êsan hexêkonta pros tois enakosiois gunaikôn hama kai paidôn autois sunarithmoumenôn."


http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin...0526%2C004know

TedM

Unbeliever, I'm not sure how YOU are reading it because what you have just written can be read in different ways.

Your translation is more favorable to Atwill's solution than the one I used.

Even so, the above translation sounds like this to me: The REST--those other than the seven, were occupied with their suicide. The victims of suicide numbered 960 in all, which included the women and children who died.

In order to include the seven in the 960 you would have to call the seven who escaped 'victims' also. That is possible, but seems a bit strained since they survived.

ted

TedM

Even as this reads it still doesn't distinguish whether 'the women and children' refers to the ones just mentioned who did escape or those that died. The words 'those others' at the beginning of the sentence to me favor the latter, it would seem. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense to start the sentence with "those others'--which EXLUDES the seven and then include them at the end of the sentence. That's just how I read it, but I don't know Greek.

ted

Unbeliever

Well, I thought that was the point I was making. The victims would presumably not have included the seven who survived, and so the two women and five children wouldn't be included among the 960, who died. But I don't have a Greek volume, nor do I know anything much about Greek, so I have to rely on the translations I have access to. The link provided by John Deere should be of some help.

TedM

Thanks for clearing that up. Maybe you shouldn't have had to but I sort of could read your answer in two different ways ..

ted