Half-Life

"At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders."

This is quote from josephus in the 1st century.

Notice I didn't use the version with all those extra "Christian sayings" in it that atheists think were planted there in a conspiracy.

Does this prove that Jesus is God? Nope, not at all.

Does this prove Jesus existed as a real person? Absolutely.

Not more than 30 years after Jesus' death and already his name was going strong that even a first century JEW knew about him.

DFrechetteNH

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...er/hojfaq.html

In addition to the article above, Bart Ehrman also discusses the very brief mention of the passage you quoted as being tampered with. The actual text is much shorter and does not embelish on the character of jesus or make mention of hist supposed divinity.

Roland

Don't the earliest known copies of Josephus not include this passage (in any form)? Or is it just that no pre-Eusebius writer mentions it while discussing Josephus? I forget which it is.

Roland

Don't YOU think "they were planted there in a conspiracy"? You can't possibly believe Josephus actually wrote them.

I also think you're on pretty shaky ground when you go around throwing troublesome sections out when there is not a scrap of evidence that a shorter version of the passage ever existed. It brings into question the validity of the passage itself.

Roger Pearse

Firstly, despite what you may read on the internet, every copy of Josephus contains this passage. Here is a list of them all:

• Manuscripts of "Antiquities"

Secondly, the passage is first quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century (his works are in general a mass of quotations from earlier writers, and valuable since often these writers are lost). However the idea that Josephus is quoted all over the place in ante-Nicene literature is a mistake:

• References to Josephus in pre-Nicene literature

"Antiquities" travelled down the years in two chunks, each of 10 books (as long works tended to). Consequently although we have a handful of writers who display knowledge of books 1-10, it is only Origen and Julius Africanus who are (a) extant and (b) must have had access to books 11-20.

It is in general a mistake to read anything into the fact that the first mention of a passage is centuries later. Hermias doesn't get mentioned by anyone until the Renaissance, 13 centuries later. Macarius Magnes only gets mentioned twice before the 19th century -- once in the 4th and once in the 15th century.

I hope that helps.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

I agree. There is evidence the existence of a different text in the 4th century since Jerome quotes it in Latin and Michael the Syrian knows it from a Syriac version. There is also evidence of these being harmonised with the vulgate -- the Greek translation of Jerome changes what he wrote to agree with the standard Greek text.

Not really.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

schilling.klaus

There's no evidence neither in nor outside the gospels.

Jesus is the Logos of hellenic philosophy,
the gospels just give a personification of the same for didactic reasons.
Only fools try to sell the gospels as an evidence for a human Jesus.
Equally charlatanic are the hilarious attempts of removing parts of the TF in order to make Jesus appear human.

Klaus Schilling

schilling.klaus

For Jesus in the true sense as The Logos, there's of course plenty of evidence down the road of history of literature, expressed in a variety of mythology, dogm, and rhetorical or poetical devices.


Klaus Schilling

Fr.Andrew

(FrAndrew): Yes, the passage appears in some form in all copies, but that doesn't tell us that it wasn't an interpolation. We know that it was quoted differently by various folk before it was finally nailed down...if it has been nailed down (I'm reading from my copy of Steve Mason, here)...so how valuable can it be from an historical perspective?

Another point that Mason raises is the passage's incongruity...if that's the word I want. It doesn't fit into the context of the surrounding passages. Sticks out like a sore thumb.
Here's a little:
Mason also devotes some ink to demonstrating that the vocabulary and style are decidedly un-Josephus-like.
It's hard not to see it as something that was added.

Roger Pearse

As far as I know it appears in the same form in all the Greek copies.

I was not, of course, addressing the issue of whether the TF is an interpolation, of which we have all heard more than enough.

All the best,

Roger Pearse