Peter Kirby

http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testimonium.htm

This thesis has been in print and on the 'net for about ten years. What responses, formal or informal, have been made to G J Goldberg on the Testimonium and the Emmaus narrative?

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

TedM

Since Vorkosigan loves parallels, I'd like to know his opinion on the ones Goldberg points to here: http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/compTable.htm

Toto

If you search for Goldberg in this forum, you find some interesting references to Whoopi and Rube.

Goldberg was last discussed in this thread. I cleaned up some of the formatting problems from the uBB conversion for clarity, but not all.

I casually opined there that if Eusebius had been the interpolator of the TF, that he might have had the Emmaus narrative in mind.

Goldberg says here

This can be reworded as:

The similarities are what would be expected if a forger such as Eusebius used Luke's Emmaus narrative as a literary source for his interpolation.

But I haven't gone through Goldberg's demonstration that the rewriting is typical of how Josephus rewrote other sources, or that the writing is not what would be expected of a Christian forger.

andrewcriddle

What I personally find most interesting about Goldberg's work is that it presents IMO a strong argument that the original form of the TF involved at least some form of reference to Jesus' disciples claiming that he appeared to them after his death.

It also presents IMO a reasonably convincing argument that the standard form of the TF, the one found in Eusebius is not the original version. ie the phrase 'if it be lawful to call him a man' is an addition to the original TF.

Andrew Criddle

Vorkosigan

It looks good to me, a further case for forgery (sorry, just don't believe that Josephus used Luke, especially here). But since reading Atwill I've been quietly rethinking the TF. No conclusions yet.

Goldberg starts at Luke 24:18, yet in the previous verse the Risen Jesus gets asked whether he is the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know what has happened. The implication is that Jesus' death and resurrection was widely known. Yet Josephus does not comment on that.

More to the point, the parallels seem to derive from the fact that both are thumbnail descriptions of Jesus life and death, and thus, are not true literary parallels. Here's his list of parallel words:

Iesous (Jesus)
aner (man)
ergon (deeds)
hemin (us)
estaurosan (cross/crucified)
triten ... hemeran (third day motif)
propheton tauta (prophets, things)
peri autou (foretold)

These words are pretty generic, and the words occur in different positions -- the longest overlap is two words in greek, peri autou (foretold). Almost any pithy description of Jesus career will contain similar words, especially since the forger and Luke are probably both operating under the creedal influences.

The problem with Goldberg's statistical approach is that it does not really think about the situation in the right way. He puts forward a number of thumbnail descriptions from the first and second century. But that raises red flag number 1: the TF is a fourth century forgery, so the comparisons are not valid. Goldberg needs to locate some later formulaic discussions and then compare them to the TF.

The second problem is that there are numerous pithy descriptions of Jesus' life and death in the ancient Christian literature. What are the odds that one of them is not going to significantly resemble this one, especially since Goldberg's analysis allows any word -- such as aner (man) -- no matter how generic. I would be more impressed by a single five word consecutive hit than a two word coincidence, especially since the vocabulary is so generic.

Hope this helps.

Vorkosigan




Vorkosigan

S.C.Carlson

As with any question of literary interrelationship, the opposite direction is also possible: i.e., that Luke used the Testimonium as a source for the Emmaus discourse.

A (very) small point in its favor is that Luke 24:18 states that the content of the Emmaus discourse was known to people in Jerusalem. Well, Josephus spent some time in Jerusalem before the War. Josephus matches the description of Luke's source (such as it is).

I'm getting ahead of myself, however, because I have not yet decided that there is a literary connection between Luke's Emmaus account and the Testimonium, though I am sufficiently intrigued to play around with some permutations of it.

Stephen

neilgodfrey

So we appear to have three on the Emmaus road so far -- Luke, Josephus and Justin (Andrew Hofer's 'The Old Man as Christ in Justin's Dialogue with Trypho' in Vigiliae Christianae, 2003, Vol. 57 Issue 1, gives reasons for thinking Justin based his old man and conversion scene on the Emmaus road story).

Does anyone know of any more using this road? (If so might begin to ask new questions re its origins and role.)