jakejonesiv

There was absolutely no connection between the alleged Jesus Christ and James the Just until a Christian interpolator invented it. By comparing Josephus, _Antiquities_, Book 20, chapter 9 with Photius codex 238, Zindler determined that Josephus originally had "James brother of the Lord". This would have nothing to do with Jesus Christ, but would indicate a leader in a brotherhood dedicated to the service of Yahweh.

A Christian interpolator reading this, and believing that the only Lord is Jesus (1 Cor. 8:6), substituted in Josephus the awkward phrase, "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James". The convoluted nature of giving priority to Jesus and only backing into James at the very end is evidence in itself of interpolation.

The Jesus the Jews Never Knew (or via: amazon.co.uk) Frank R. Zindler, 2003. ISBN 1-57884-916-0.

andrewcriddle

The Photius passage is online bibliotheca It seems more likely that Photius is paraphrasing Josephus here than that he has a different text.

Andrew Criddle

jakejonesiv

Hi Andrew,

Zindler's argument is that Photius, being a devout Christian, would not have omitted the name of Jesus if he had it in his text of Josephus AJ 20.9.1.

Jake Jones IV

andrewcriddle

Photius uses 'Jesus' rather rarely when referring to Christ and almost always in the form 'Lord Jesus Christ' I would have expected him to change 'Jesus called Christ' to something more reverent.

Photius does use 'Lord' frequently when referring to Christ; including referring to 'James the Lord's brother' in his review of the pseudo-Clementines photius bibliotheca.

Hence his version of Josephus on James seems to use Photian rather than Josephan vocabulary.

Andrew Criddle

show_no_mercy

Now that I think about it, that makes sense of gThomas 12

jakejonesiv

Hi Andrew,

You always make a valid point.

However, it is more that just a substituion on Photius of "brother of the Lord" for "brother of Jesus." The text, as it now stands in Josephus Antiquities 20.9.1 is a bit awkward.

It reads, "and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others." The text really should be about James, who was being brought to trial. It leads with Jesus, then indicates which Jesus (called the Christ) and only then gets to the real subject, James. The tail is wagging the dog. The author of the current text seems to place much more importance on Jesus than the person facing trial, indicating a Christian interpolation.

Compare that with Photius "... and accused James, the brother of the Lord, and others with him"

So we have "James, the brother of the Lord" compared with "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James." The former seems more original. I also agree that Zindler has made a valid point.

As you pointed out, Photius did not hesitate to use the "Lord Jesus Christ." Why then would Photius drop both Jesus and Christ if it was in his text? If he had wanted to indicate something more reverent surely he would have used the phrase, "the Lord Jesus Christ."

I think what has happened is that a Christian scribe, read in Antiquites 20.9.1 a reference to "James the Just" who was previously unassociated with Jesus Christ. Josephus had written "James, brother of the Lord." This James had been an extemely righteous man in the service of Yahweh. The Christian scribe, under the influence of the belief that Jesus is Lord, made so bold as to insert his savior's name into the Josephean text. The temptation was irrestible, because another Jesus was already mentioned in the same section! Surely, a good Christian can be excused for clearing up this ambiguity. This is quite understandable.

Best,
Jake Jones IV

andrewcriddle

One problem is the extreme reluctance of Josephus to use Lord (Kurios) as a Greek equivalent of God/Yahweh. If Josephus had meant what Zindler suggests he meant, then he would probably have said Brother of God (Theos). Remember Josephus is writing for non-Jewish readers who would be simply confused if Josephus wrote James the Brother of the Lord meaning James the Brother of Yahweh (which seems an unlikely title anyway).

Andrew Criddle

Chaucer

The odd word order in Josephus is, in fact, sometimes typical of him and hardly an aberration :


Wars 2.21.1
a man of Gischala, the son of Levi, whose name was Johnâ;

Ant. 5.8.1
but he had also one that was spurious, by his concubine Drumah, whose
name was Abimelech;

Ant. 11.5.1
Now about this time a son of Jeshua, whose name was Joacim, was the
high priest.


Now some here have argued that, contextually, one or two of these are somehow separate and apart from Antiq. 20. Well, one or two may or may not be, but here we are still addressing primarily the word order per se. And when it comes to basic word order -- Bottom line: such convoluted word order does appear elsewhere in Josephus on a few occasions. Maybe not often, but at least three times. At the least, then, one cannot claim categorically that such word order is at all impossible in Josephus's original. Unusual, yes, but not unprecedented.

Chaucer

Steven Carr

So Christians would change Josephus to make it more theologically acceptable to them?

spin

The issue has already been dealt with. You obviously missed it and its implications.

Josephus wrote a whole chapter about John immediately before. This is not the introduction of John.

He has just been mentioned. Try to focus on the discourse and not simply look for vaguely similar structures.

This Yeshua has been mentioned six times before in the same book. Joachim is introduced through a figure Josephus has made well-known to his readers.

None of these attempted parallels deal with the issue of inverted structure without discourse necessity. The syntax in AJ 20.200 is marked and there is no reason for the marking provided, whereas in the examples you provide, the logic of the marking is obvious: established prior reference. This is a simple linguistic issue.

Bottom line: understand the issues before showing you don't understand.


spin