Mandelbrot

Not what Josephus wrote anyway. This is one of many Christian apologetic lies. Who was called the christ is an obvious Christian forgery but the entire passage

The Jesus being referred to is the Jesus specifically identified in the last sentence. I thought Jesus the mythman was the supposed son of Joseph and Mary. Here it is Damneus. Besides, if the mythman was the Christ, why appoint him high priest since he already was supposed to be that and more?

Please pinkvoy, stop wasting the forums bandwidth with your inanity.

andrewcriddle

I do feel that posters are confusing two distinct questions about the OP.

question 1/ Is the premise of the OP plausible ?
question 2/ What would be the implications of the premise if it really happened ?

Some replies answer question 1/, (i.e. provide arguments that the premise is implausible), but seem to regard this as an answer to question 2/ which is the question asked in the OP.

This would only be legitimate if the OP was extremely implausible, which seems not to be the case.

Andrew Criddle

LegionOnomaMoi

I didn't know the philosopher he met in Italy. Yet I know that he received a book from my grandfather, and that he ws in Italy at a certain time.

Josephus was an educated individual who was not only interested in the history of his people and the period leading up to and including the fall of Jerusalem, but also in a perfect position to investigate the events and people involved in Jewish/Roman interactions prior to this fall. History, after all, meant (in greek) "investigation" (or "inquiry"). Historians related first what they saw with their own eyes, and secondly what they could get from eyewitnesses. If neither were available, of course, they relied on tradition, texts, etc.

The point about my grandfather's experience was not that I knew about him so much as I knew about others through him. Josephus, on the other hand, was not seperated from Pilate's time by two whole generations the way I am with the people my grandfather told me about. And just as my grandfather was an educated individual who travelled, so too was Josephus connected to similar individuals and was himself such a person.

If there was a certain Jesus travelling around Galilee who (like others) gathered followers and created enough of a stir among his fellow Jews that the aristrocrats among them got the romans involved to execute Jesus, Josephus was in an excellent position to hear about this. He knew about John the Baptist, about Judas the Galilean, and others who were similar to Jesus.


That generation gap would be like me hearing accounts from those roughly the same age as my parents (or anybody hearing such accounts). Eyewitness memory is problematic for certain details (I referred to one of many studies which demonstrate the amount of detail one can miss, and there are just as many which concern what people can imagine they saw/heard). However, it is one thing to realize that people who see a someone with a gun holding up a fast food restaurant are far less likely to recognize the person holding the gun than if the person was holding a check, and quite another to say that nobody realized the person was there at all.

To bring this back to Josephus, it's one thing to realize that those living a generation before Josephus, even eyewitnesses, probably misremembered details about events involving those who had followers and/or caused a stir (like John the Baptist). It's quite another to imagine they misremembered the entirety of whatever such individuals did or whatever actions they were known for. The TF, if some part of it is authentic, is not a report of the former type. There is no report of a single event (as there is in the gospels) which describes not only what happened, but even what was said at the time. It is a general summary, and therefore the fact that Josephus wasn't there is irrelevant. The idea that Josephus wrote about a certain Jesus called Christ who gathered followers and crowds and was executed a few years before Josephus was born, but that he had no access to reliable accounts concerning this Jesus such that he could accurately report this sparse summary of Jesus' career is incredibly unlikely (especially in an oral culture). It's far more likely that he would hear rumors which were false, legends which were exaggerations of actual events, legends which were false, and so forth, than that he had neither access to a general idea of what this Jesus did and to what happened to him nor the ability to report an accurate, brief summary of his career.

Actually, if part of the TF is authentic, it's most likely that Josephus heard a great many secondary accounts. And it's most likely that many of these were partially or entirely false. But he doesn't give us details here, even in the extant version. He gives us a general account. Given Josephus' involvement and knowledge of previous generations and the events/individuals of import who lived before him, the fact that his information is secondary is irrelevant.

Hearsay matters in court (and even here there are many exceptions such that hearsay is allowed) first because the system is designed to protect the guilty rather than convict the innocent, and second because what is reported concerns details. To refer back to the study I linked to above, it's bad enough to rely on someone who sees a guy holding a gun during a hold up for details about what that guy looked like, and even worse to rely on another person whom that eyewitness described the guy to.

A better analogy is journalism or documentaries. The guy who wrote Blackhawk Down travelled to the largely illiterate city Mogadishu to question those who were there during the battle which ended with the death of 18 US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis. He may have heard several accounts which involved events that never happened, and many more which were inaccurate about several details. The same is true for those who have written about Vietnam, or the Holocaust. They questioned those who were there and no doubt some details were inaccurate. To give a specific example, the founder of SEAL team 6 has written about his life and experiences both before he founded the team and after. I happen to know a former SEAL team 6 sniper (he was the one who originally taught me tactical carbine). I've also read the several accounts others have written about events the founder of the team discussed in his books. The guy I know said the founder was "something else" and a bit out there. The other accounts written after the founder's books disagree in certain places about details the founder reported. But they don't state the event never happened at all. Some accounts reported involve individuals of whom we have no official records because the individuals weren't Americans. Is it likely that these people never existed, just because those who have read these books were never there and thus are getting the stories secondhand (and sometimes not even that, as such books often report things that the authors heard from a fellow soldier)? I don't think so.

pinkvoy

it's not a popularity contest, but focusing on 1 scholar who claims the entire TF is a forgery to the exclusion of competing claims is not responsible historical scholarship.

And in the face of new evidence, old arguments have to be revisted. His arguments would be completely falsified if a surviving copy of the rTF were found that predates the current extant copies and contains rTF.

pinkvoy

+1
basically

hidden and buried in a roman aristocrat library of early 2nd century Rome is a copy of Antiquities, hand written, w/ rTF in it waiting to be unearthed.

The gnostic gospels, gospel of Peter, Gospel of Judas were all recent re-discoveries. the dead sea scrolls were a re-discovery of the OT and other unknown documents.

pinkvoy

one more insult like this and I'm putting you on my ignore list.

Since 2 Jesus were written about Josepheus obviously wanted to distinguish the 2.

pinkvoy

you've claimed that if the rTF were known to the church fathers of the 2nd and 3rd century, they would have reported it. the fact they fail to do so is evidence the rTF is a completely forgery.

So what would be examples in writing of 2nd and 3rd century church fathers and apologists should have referenced rTF and failed to do so? i.e Iraneus Origin, Eusebeus Justin etc

pinkvoy

this post shows why such line of argument is simply invalid - it is a false analogy to compare Josepheus writing about 1st century Judea and Iliad

Spanky

Pinkvoy, why do you spend so much effort and time arguing a hypothetical? It's not going to happen. And if it did? Well, it's not going to happen so there's no use pondering a "mythicist's" potential response.

aa5874

Please, I am addressing your fallacies where you claimed Jesus died 36 CE and that Josephus may have heard of Jesus when he was 2 years old..

In gLuke, the supposed Jesus was killed c 29-31 CE or within ONE Passover of the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius.

It should be most obvious that Josephus ALSO could have heard of Jesus, if he did live, at c 93 CE.