stephan huller

I was looking around at the various citations of 1 Samuel 18:1 - 5 (you know the gay sounding reference of Jonathan and David becoming one). The Masoretic text has the reference, the LXX removed it (it appears in the Qumran literature). Josephus in Antiquities gives a summary of the various historical references in the Bible. He was a Pharisee living in Judea. You'd expect him to know the Masoretic version of 1 Samuel. Yet he omits the famous 'the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and he loved him as himself.' Indeed the editors here note that he follows the LXX entirely.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ilE...3A1%22&f=false

How is that fucking possible? Here is a parallel example. The Samaritans have a version of the Ten Commandments which conclude with God making Mount Gerizim the holy place. If a contemporary Samaritan was going through story by story in the Bible like Josephus was doing you wouldn't expect him to cite our version of Exodus or Deuteronomy. Even if he was writing in English he'd use his traditional version of the narrative and so he'd make reference to the tenth commandment as it appears in his version of the Pentateuch. As such this is one of a hundred reasons why what passes as the writings of Jewish Pharisee from Palestine was not written by a Jewish Pharisee from Palestine.

Duke Leto

Sigh.

So?

There's a lot of bullshit in Antiquities that doesn't jive with the Masoretic text. Josephus was obviously writing with a Greek audience in mind and they would be reading the LXX rather than the Masoretic texts, so why sync up with the Hebrew version?

Further, the Masoretic text is centuries younger than the Septuagint. We know the text underwent mutations between the first recording of the authorial strains of the Torah to the Septuagint, why not further changes between the Septuagint and the Masoretic compilation? You have no authority whatsoever to declare that the Masoretic wording and not something like a Hebrew version of the Septuagint would be the received version of the story for a 1st century Jewish Pharisee.

But what's the point in raising these objections? You've shown nothing but withering contempt for anyone who you don't feel measures up to your self-proclaimed level of learning. Anyone who tries to question any detail of your epileptic tree theory will be dismissed out of hand, if you condescend to acknowledge them at all.

I sometimes get the impression you only use these threads as a notepad.

"Men willingly believe what they wish."

stephan huller

Yes I do use these discussions to stimulate alternative points of view other than my own. I think that's healthy and you should do the same. It is amazing to see what happens when you remove the wax between your ears (and existing presuppositions between the hemispheres of your brain). In this case for example - please explain to me a scenario where by an Aramaic speaking Jew from Palestine would have followed the LXX. And it isn't a 'theory.' It is really as patchwork of observations. The portrait of a Jew from Palestine who just so happens to accept Jesus and the scriptures that Christians used is bizarre. It just doesn't work. To give a parallel. In the Mimar Marqe a while back, the Samaritan 'midrash' (don't know what else to call it) there are references to a Greek recension to the Pentateuch (either the LXX or the Samaritikon it's hard to say). Two experts in the field immediately suggested it might argue for an Alexandrian provenance to the section or the text (the Dositheans were very prominent in Alexandria).

The point is that scholars overlook many problems is Josephus. Yet the use of the LXX is extremely problematic. Just look at Vita where Josephus responds to charges that he forcibly circumcised Greeks, destroyed public artistic representations of animals and living creatures. These are extreme positions within Judaism which to my knowledge are never associated with Hellenized Greeks.

But getting back to your repeated criticism. I am not going beyond the question of the legitimacy of Josephus. The problem existed in my mind from the moment I encountered the Testimonium. It exists in the minds of all Jews who come across an ancient zealot who happens to espouse a Christian POV. I don't know if you've noticed this but Jews don't typically have a favorable view of Jesus and the claim that he believed he was their messiah.

Duke Leto

If you didn't notice, I just did.

I suggested that the LXX more accurately reflects the Hebrew or Aramaic text in existence in the 1st century then does the much later Masoretic Hebrew.

Or have you read the non-extant 1st century Hebrew or Aramaic copies of the passage?

stephan huller

Another set of illustrations that Josephus's Book of Samuel was the LXX version rather than the Masoretic text:

http://books.google.com/books?id=S34...int%22&f=false

Feldman puts this in a footnote but I think it deserves further discussion. My question to you would be WHY ISN'T THIS SIGNIFICANT? How can this be taken in stride?

stephan huller

I don't quite understand what you are suggesting. Josephus used a Hebrew text which agrees with the LXX but wrote in Greek? Isn't the more likely answer that he simply used the LXX?

stephan huller

Feldman references Laqueur's theory that Josephus actually abandoned the Masoretic text and embraced the LXX which raised the ire of his Palestinian compatriots. http://books.google.com/books?id=YVB...int%22&f=false I find this difficult to believe but it is the only logical conclusion based on the evidence aside from my suggestion that the works attributed to him were written by the second century synergoi.


Mod note: google book citation is to Louis Feldman, Josephus's Interpretation of the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)

stephan huller

Feldman again on the subject of Josephus's Bible text:

As to the likelihood that Josephus would use a Greek text of the Bible, there would naturally be an attraction in doing so because he is writing in Greek; but one would expect, a priori, that Josephus would shy away from employing the Septuagint because, despite Pseudo-Longinus’ compliment in his On the Sublime (9:9), it is stylistically inferior to the classical authors whom Josephus quite obviously preferred and because it would be readily understood only by those who already were acquainted with the Bible in its original language. Indeed, Kennedy has remarked that Josephus is more persisent that any other writer of Hellenistic Greek in his use of classical Greek words, particularly from Herodotus, the tragedians, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and, above all, Thucydides, even to the extent of using rare words employed by these authors. The very fact, we may add, that Josephus sought assistants (Ag.Ap. 1:50) to help him with his Greek style and that he declares (Ant. 20:263) that he laboured strenuously to partake of the realm of Greek prose and poetry, would make him hesitant to use the Septuagint as a source, especially since he was trying, quite obviously, in his Antiquities to reach a cultured Greek audience and to render the biblical narrative respectable in their eyes. Moreover, the very fact that he is paraphrasing the Bible in Greek would seem to indicate that he hoped to improve on that rendering; otherwise there would hardly have been much point in a new version. Hence, it is only where the style of the Septuagint is more polished, as in the additions to Esther or in 1 Esdras, that one would expect him to adhere to its text.

And yet, the very fact that Josephus cites the Septuagint (Ant. l:lO-12) as a precedent (it really was not a very good precedent, inasmuch as it had been done upon demand of a head of state rather than for non-Jews generally) for presenting the history of the Jews to the non-Jewish Greek world and that he devotes so much space (Ant. 12:11-118) to his paraphrase of the account in the Letter of Aristem pertaining to the Septuagint would indicate its importance to him, especially since one would hardly have expected, a priori, that Josephus, in a work emphasizing the political and military history of the Jews, would give so much attention to a subject which, strictly speaking, belongs in cultural and religious history. And yet, if he had ignored the Septuagint it would have been viewed as an indication that he was trying to hide something because of the tremendous regard in which that version was held. However, even when Josephus agrees with the Septuagint, there is no guarantee that this is because he had the text of the Septuagint before him, since such an agreement might well be due to an exegetical tradition which he happened to know and which had been incorporated earlier by the translators of the Septuagint. Moreover, of the thirteen changes listed by the rabbis (B. T. Meg 9a, Soferim 1:8) as having been made deliberately by the translators when they rendered the text into Greek, only four can be found in any current manuscript of the Septuagint. This would seem to imply that Josephus might well have had a text different from any of the two thousand manuscripts of the Septuagint that we now have. Finally, the biblical texts discovered at Qumran indicate that the differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew text were not as great as we had previously supposed, even in sectarian circles. It is generally difficult, we may add, because Josephus is usually not translating but paraphrasing, to discover which manuscript tradition of the Septuagint he is following. Thackeray has noted that of the thirteen instances where we can determine which manuscript he followed, he adheres to the Alexandrinus ten times and the Vaticanus three times; this, we may comment, would seem to indicate that the manuscript before him was the direct ancestor of neither but rather belonged to a still different tradition. [Feldman, Chapter Thirteen: Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra p. 455] from Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading & Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism & Early Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk), Martin J. Mulder and Harry Sysling, eds

Duke Leto

Not a lot to respond to in the expansion to your post you wrote while I composed mine.

I'm not sure why you're trying to shame an Atheist with defending Josephus's Christian POV. I don't even believe he had a Christian POV since I agree with Doherty that the Testimonium and the "Brother of Jesus, the Christ" bit were monastic additions from centuries later.

From my perspective you are just trying to tear apart a fairly important, albeit self-serving and frequently inaccurate, historian because his work disagrees with your Talmudic interpretations, and you are too in love with the interpretations you've concocted from the ludicrously unreliable Talmud and Church Fathers to admit anything that contradicts them.

If you're interested in integrating alternate points of view I have yet to see this happen. You NEVER adequately answered objections to your Drusilla notion and you've never condescended to acknowledge the possibility that there are alternate interpretations to the 147 CE passages in the Church Fathers. It wouldn't surprise me if you're still claiming Hegesippus was a fake name even after being shown the attested 4th Century BCE Athenian Hegesippus. The last thread of yours I participated in was simply you posting musings on your topic over and over again without integrating any suggestions or criticisms.

I could make other totally justified criticisms concerning your conduct but will refrain in deference to the moderators.

stephan huller

But this isn't about Agrippa and it isn't about the Jewish POV. I was merely trying to illustrate that my difficulties with Josephus existed from a young age and had nothing to do with Agrippa. The problem is a significant, so much so that there are many different points of view. My point is that scholars start with the assumption that Antiquities must be 'really' from Josephus so they adjust their arguments with regards to that initial proposition. I would like to see a study done comparing Antiquities to the Christian use of the LXX. I bet there are significant parallels.