Amaleq13

Vivisector,


I supposed I'm being too demanding for an admittedly speculative construct. Your ideas are reasonable within the speculative context and within the context certain fundamental assumptions (e.g. some historicity to the Gospel stories).

I agree and that is why I have trouble seeing a reference to his execution being appropriate to the broader context.

Now you've even abandoned the Gospels as a basis for your reconstruction.

You are certainly not the only one. The stories are deeply embedded in the "cultural subconscious" of many folks.

Actually, I'm more inclined to accept him as a convert to Christianity than I am his alleged sibling relationship with Jesus.

You misunderstand me. I am not making that assertion. I am only noting that the existing evidence does not support any knowledge of "Jesus" on the part of Tacitus or Pliny.

While true, the absence of any reference to such a central feature of Paul's gospel seems to me to make it difficult to connect their knowledge to Pauline thought.

But the above doesn't seem to me to describe the execution of the sort of troublemaker that Josephus consistently condemns.

Vivisector

Spin,

A very thoughtful and logical analysis. With two possible exceptions, I can see how Origen *could* have supplied the information identified as parenthetical. The first of the two exceptions is Origen's use of the word "prophet." It simply strikes me as very unlikely that Origen would have flatly referred to Jesus as a mere prophet, which suggests to me that Josephus wrote at least this much more. The second is the passage you mentioned. It seems Josephus must have written something along these lines, but it just ain't there anymore.

The best reason I have for supposing that Origen found the other material that you consider parenthetical in Josephus is the "control" passage relating to John the Baptist (in that one, at least, Origen was very faithful to Josephus).

Cheers,

V.

Vivisector

Not at all - this is all part of how people like me learn and refine (or even abandon) their ideas.

To me, it just seems like the type of information Josephus includes to flesh out the story. Other possible examples are in Ant. 17.10.5,6 and 7 and parallels in Wars 2.4.1,2 and 3. Josephus seems not to have viewed these individuals (Judas, Simon and Athronges) favorably, but he includes information on them in accounts of disorders and/or tumults, apparently as background and context.

The Gospels *do* mention a disturbance at the Temple, so maybe there's a connection. But as I said, I'm trying not to let that drive my thinking too much.

That's interesting - I'd never thought very much along these lines. Rather, I'd always looked at the documentation for siblings (especially James) of Jesus as one of Christianity's embarrassments that miraculously escaped the cutting room floor.

You're exactly right. I would only suggest the counterpoint, that their failure to explicitly mention the name "Jesus," in this limited population of documents where context would not particularly demand its presence, does not necessarily mean they had no knowledge of it.

I probably should have tried harder to be clearer. I think simple reference to Jesus as "Christ" would be consistent with Pauline and/or Christ Cult Christianity. To Christ Cult adherents, Jesus the man seems to have been far less important that Jesus the Christ, Christ Jesus, or simply Christ (as it was for Paul). If the Christianity that Tacitus and Pliny were familiar with was the Christ Cult brand, then it doesn't seem strange to me that Tacitus and Pliny would have referred simply to a "Christ." I didn't mean to imply that Tacitus and/or Pliny would have been particularly knowledgeable about Paul's teaching, let alone authorities - only that the information they had and the terminology they used might have derived from Pauline/Christ Cult Christianity.

Cheers,

V.

the_cave

Yes, I participated in (at least) one of those discussions.

I'm not here to prove it wasn't. The proposed Josephus connection is interesting, b/c it proposes a reason why Tacitus gave Pilate the wrong office. But then, one has to ask why Josephus would make the mistake...

It's interesting to wonder, if the Tacitus, too, is a forgery, then who put it there, when, and where (and why were they careful enough to put a negative spin on the Christians?)

Mid-first century, from Paul. Whether or not they would even have recognized the term.

I say it just means anything we would recognizably call "Christian"--specifically, people who believe in Christ (which Paul, et al, certainly did.)

I don't disagree it's about an individual (whether forged or not). I'm just suggesting that individual didn't have to be named in the passage.

the_cave

Yep, I am considering highly hypothetical ideas here. Have never said they weren't.

Why is this an "interesting ploy"? I was just pointing out that someone whose opinion many here respect had an interesting idea about the meaning of "Christ". You don't have to agree. I never suggested you had to. You seem very prickly, and I can't understand why.

I am not trying to redefine words in order to maximalize the Christian record. I'm merely considering fruitful ideas to see which ones compliment one another. And again, there's simply nothing wrong with that.

spin, it's because I'm relying on you (and others) to provide the cons. Call it teamwork, call it dialectic (we've have this conversation before), that's the way debates are played out on this forum. Witness Vivisector and Amaleq's parallel discussion. And for that matter, I have provided several cons. I can retrieve them for you if you want (though they're right there in my last few posts.)

I'm not "abandoning" anything. I'm suggesting it makes sense even without a direct Christian label for the individual in the passage. This has nothing to do with "maintaining some Christian content" in the passage--I am merely considering whether or not it could be directly related to the passage in Tacitus (and this could be the case, regardless of whether one or both were forgeries).

Yes. And I myself have given reasons why this doesn't necessarily preserve the (hypothertical) remainder. Sorry if you missed them. Reread my most recent posts.

Ew, germs!

First you mock me for eating it, then you tell me to eat up. Fly specks? This is becoming a most convoluted metaphor...

Well, I won't so long as you keep claiming I have:

Amaleq13

It seems to me that every possible conception of an original reference to Jesus carries with it significant problems except "no original reference".

The bottom line for me is 1) the passage, as it stands, is clearly the work of Christians, 2) Josephus is consistently opposed to the sort of rebels who got crucified by the Romans, 3) the apparent fact that James was better known outside Christianity as "the Just" than he was the brother of Jesus and 4) the text reads smoothly with the passage removed. The outer two suggest the entire passage is suspect. The middle two of these suggest to me that, even if I assume Josephus knew of Jesus and knew he was the brother of James, he would not have felt compelled to mention him.

Your speculations require that the benefit of the doubt be given and I just don't see sufficient reason to do so.

Unfortunately for that line of thought, Vorkosigan has, IMO, convincingly established that story to be the fictional creation of Mark's author. See this thread.

I consider the single reference in Paul's letters to either be an interpolation or a misinterpretation of a title (in order of personal preference) and the transformation of brother James in Mark's Gospel into James the Just in Luke to be a later development.

Vivisector

To be truthful, as far as that goes, I don't think I could honestly propose an alternate reconstruction that wouldn't raise and/or fail to address problems for me as well.

1) No disagreement here.
2) He certainly tends to write as if he were, which is to say, I don't find this to be a problematic statement.
3) I'd be interested in an elaboration on this one (James better known as "the Just" outside Christianity).
4. I agree again, though I don't know how highly it can be weighted. Taking a look at Ant. 17.10.4-7, it seems there are several permutations of passages (including the totality of 4-7) that could be removed without adversely affecting the flow.

I'm not clinging too closely to the idea that an original TF would have mentioned James, not yet anyway. Reference to James could have a heckuva lot of explanatory power, and depending on its form, could have been immensely embarrassing to early Christians. But I don't want to make too much of it unless I can be sure that anything I might suggest isn't too tainted by my current assumptions regarding Jesus, James and the early "Jesus movement."

Thanks for the reference. After going through all seven pages, I'll just say, I don't think the type of incident discussed in Mark or John occurred. I do think that *something* happened, but that the Gospel authors cleaned it up considerably (or had to fabricate the details completely). I'm willing to concede that I'd be hard-put to defend the idea to a greater degree than Rick has, and that my own notion of an original TF would be heavily dependent on the occurrence of a calamity - anywhere in Jerusalem would suffice, but the Temple would be most logical in my hypothesis.

In view of (a) there are no variants on Gal. 1:19 in the UBS GNT4 and (b) the doctrinal difficulties introduced by the verse, I don't see any reason to reject the original reading insofar as textual reasons are concerned. Also, does Luke refer to "James the Just?"

Cheers,

V.

Amaleq13

From Hegesippus, Origen and Luke's author we are told that a man named James had a high reputation among his fellow Jews. That is what I meant by "outside Christianity". The first two give the specific nickname as related to that fact. Hegesippus' story of his death seems to suggest that James' faith in Jesus as the messiah was something of a suprise to the Jewish leaders. They seem to have considered James one of their own right up until his professed his faith. While Hegesippus' story certainly appears to be, at the very least, somewhat of an elaborated exaggeration, I don't see any reason for him to fabricate this portion of the story.

What if there was a reference to James that made no mention whatsoever of Jesus? I imagine some Christians might find it almost impossible not to add one.

The Gospel authors "cleaned it up" and another Christian deleted it from Josephus? Seems simpler to conclude that no such event took place. As I believe was pointed out in that thread, an actual disturbance makes the Jewish conspiracy unnecessary and Pilate's reluctant conviction absurd. There is so much fiction disguising the alleged event that you have to wonder why we should suspect it happened at all.

And this calamity was so embarrassing to Christians that they entirely replaced it with the existing TF? Is it reasonable to assume that none of Christianity's critics would have made mention of it prior to the deletion?

I want to avoid creating a major tangent but I'm not suspicious of it for those reasons. It has been discussed several times in the past so you could probably dig them up if you are bored enough to search. If it is original to Paul, I would tend to think it more likely to refer to God than Jesus as spin argued in this thread.

I don't think so but his primary James in Acts seems intended to be understood as the same guy.

spin

Sorry, Viv, but you need to find "prophet" in the TF, if you want a glimmer of credibility. As you don't you have no reason for your musing to be related to Josephus at all.

What Josephus actually wrote is beyond the data, which on all fronts points against the TF containing anything original to Josephus.

Who knows why Origen made the mistakes he did? Whatever the case, I find nothing really strange in his report, nothing that supports the TF or the reference to Jesus when dealing with James.

You either need to explain this more clearly or point me to an earlier discussion.


spin

spin

The metaphor is extremely straightforward. Your avoidance of the implications is one of the few things your responses have going for them. Sorry.

You are trying to complain that the rest is clean. You simply have no way of knowing, yet this is the sort of situation in which guilty by association is a normal sentence. Instead you profess without any reasoning to say the rest is clean.


spin