Doug Shaver

They didn't have to, for reasons already noted.

I didn't say it escaped mention. I was offering a plausible reason for there being no surviving mention. That is an absence of evidence, but it is not an inexplicable absence, and therefore not evidence of absence.

I don't agree that Josephus's awareness of Jesus would have been relevant only to a debate about his existence. It would also have been relevant to a debate about, for just one instance, whether the gospel authors were being honest when they reported that he was famous throughout the region. (Matt. 4:24; Matt. 9:26, 31; Mark 1:45; Luke 4:14; Luke 5:15) A pagan might also have questioned whether Josephus could have been ignorant of, or indifferent to, a man who somehow managed to get a reputation for bringing dead people back to life.

Doug Shaver

You mean, except when they agree with us?

That's what I thought.

Roger Pearse

It is always possible to drag portions of posts out of context to make people contradict themselves, or say things which they do not actually think. But of course I only respond to posts which deal with what I did say, and not manufactured ones.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Malachi151

I think the citation by Origen, which is often used by defenders of the authenticity of the passage, is actually the strongest evidence against its authenticity.

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...ty_of_the_Jews

It seems to me that Origen is citing Hegesippus when he cites Josephus on Jesus, but is Vork saying that this is not possible?

spin

Although jjramsey was a participant, he seems unable to remember the thread that included Ben C's (as I see it, problematic) problem. If he had read the material in the thread more attentively he would not have arbitrarily stopped where he did thus presenting a false impression of the progress of the thread. Ben C's problem was dealt with.


spin

jjramsey

Scrolling down doesn't help your case that much. The grammatical case remained pretty much the same.

jjramsey

As far as I can tell, all you really offered was to say that the copyist would have some vague sense that "he was making a useful contribution to his cause." Trouble is, while that hazy justification makes some sense for a copyist hazy enough in thinking to be sloppy in his interpolation, it makes far less sense for a copyist shrewd enough to keep the interpolation minimal. Why is he shrewd enough to be a clever forger yet not shrewd enough to think through how his forgery will be used?

But your reasons for there being no surviving mention were that the debate ended too early and was pretty much quashed by the Gospels, so that the early Church fathers has little opportunity to mention them. In other words, you offer a distinction without a difference.

First, such a tepid mention of Jesus would be poor evidence of Jesus' fame before his death, especially since the mention of Jesus is in a passage about events three decades after his death. Second, such a tepid mention of Jesus would be poor evidence of Josephus not being indifferent to Jesus.

Doug Shaver

Mind if I try again?

You wrote:
You also wrote:
These two statements appear to be inconsistent. Would you clarify your position about when we should or should not rely on authoritative sources?

Doug Shaver

It didn't take a lot of shrewdness to avoid putting praise of Jesus into a famous Jew's mouth. The copyist who made Josephus say of Jesus "He was the messiah" wasn't just lacking shrewdness. He was a plain fool.

It would have been quite sufficient evidence against any claim that Josephus didn't mention him at all.

My apologies. I seem to have fogotten the title of this thread. I thought were were referring to the alleged "authentic core" of the TF.

I don't think the James reference was meant to prove anything about what Josephus knew. I think that in that case the scribe thought he was just setting the record straight. He saw Josephus talking about a famously righteous man named James who was murdered by the high priest. Considering the apparent time and place, he naturally thought, "That must have been James the Just. I'd better make sure everybody knows that."


I don't recall saying that. I assume you're referring to this exchange:

First, I emphasize the point that the historicity debate was likely brief relative to the other debates, i.e., however long the others lasted, this one did not last as long.

Second, It was not the publication of the gospels that facilitated its demise. It was their widespread distribution, or at least widespread knowledge of their existence within the Christian community. That seems to have been sometime in the late second century, maybe not until the early third. The debate probably started soon after the first gospel was written, but we needn't assume that it immediately engaged the whole Christian world.

The surviving record is too fragmentary for us to be certain about any of this, but that is part of my argument. Neither historicists nor mythicists have a smoking gun in their evidence. I am not defending the certainty of Jesus' nonexistence. I am defending only the reasonableness of doubting his existence, and I think the evidence allows lots of reasonable doubt.

I think the distinction between "Nothing was written" and "Nothing that got written has survived" makes some difference. The first would have been incredible. The second is plausible.

jjramsey

But it does take shrewdness to make it look offhanded and keep it in Josephus' style.

But why would a pagan bother making such a narrow claim that had little bearing on the truth of Christianity, as opposed to charges like "Your Jesus was nowhere near as famous as you claim!"?

There isn't anything in that passage that suggests that James was famously righteous.

Irenaeus' Against Heresies was written about 175-185 C.E., in the range of time that you have the debate over historicity taking place.