TedM

Is Kirby wrong?:



Ok.



If my search was accurate there is only one reference to 'brother' according to the flesh which was necessary because he was talking about his fellow Israelites so he needed to distinguish those brethren with the brethren he normally refers to - his Christian brethren. There is no need for him to distinguish a biological relationship with the "Lord's brother(s)" because presumably everybody knew who he was talking about and what their relationship was to the Lord.


You are making an assumption that may or may not be right. You can't assume the entire passage is interpolated. Why trash the whole passage when some of it may be authentic? What if only one word was in question? Would you trash it then? The conscientious learner would not. He would examine what remains and determine if there is any reason to discard it on its own terms.



Yes, of course that is true. As can also be said for any passage of any writing. You don't discard it just because you are not smart enough to catch something.

It doesn't prove anything to show that what remains is consistent. It doesn't prove the pt theory. But neither does finding that any other passage in Josephus is consistent with his style prove that Josephus wrote it. But it does provide a reasonable basis for examining all of the other evidence.

Examining the TF isn't about proving that Josephus wrote it. What you and toto are doing is concluding that since it is obviously a corrupted passage, one should not give it the time of day because one can't possibly know for certain that all of it isn't interpolated. That's the equivalent to creating a requirement of linguistic proof of authenticity. You are not simply holding it to a higher standard than typical text that doesn't appear corrupted. You are refusing to consider any argumentation once you appeal to a requirement of linguistic proof. That IMO is not reasonable since other argumentation should be considered when the linguistic evidence is not clearly corrupt, and when you remove the corrupted parts the linguistic evidence is not clearly corrupt. In fact, why in the world should we keep in the corrupt parts when we know it is corrupt? That's exactly what you and toto are requiring.

TedM

I've made a decision tonight to take Kirby's review points one by one and examine them. I can't take the time to respond to multiple issues at once anymore. The TF is too big.

Ted

Toto

Er, yes it is.

It is just recognizing that when you have obvious evidence of extensive tampering, as we have here, there is no obvious way to reconstruct the original text.

But you have not presented any "argumentation" other than the argument that some of the text could have been written by Josephus. That's not an argument with any weight.

In another thread, PhilosopherJay had attempted to reconstruct the original of the passage on John the Baptist. His argument is quite ingenious, and involves some absurdities and impossible elements in the text, a sort of writers fatigue, where the interpolator failed to clean up all of the details of his inserted narrative. But you don't have any similar arguments here. There is no evidence of any insertions or alterations withiin the paragraph, which could support a partial interpolation.

tablepad

just saying hello to everybody!

spin

Yet another non-response.

That makes the passage an interpolation.

You're assuming your conclusion.

"[T]arnished" for your biases is "bits you don't like". There is no way of knowing that any of the passage is valid. What we do know is that a christian source has added christian material to Josephus. The simplest conclusion is that a christian source added all the christian material.

The passage contains clearly fraudulent material. The onus is squarely on those who want to save some of it to show acceptable methodology for not arbitrarily retaining it.

With that knowledge you have no meaningful way of proceeding. The passage you use for its hypothesized historical value cannot be shown to be a tenable source. In fact it certainly contains false information and you are trying to say, well let's just cut those bits out and the rest will be ok.

:tombstone:

TedM

Spin, it is interesting that you think Kirby is wrong after citing scholars that dispute your claim..oh well. This post it for you too, as it addresses the same kinds of issues you bring up above.

Do you treat all issues on this board like that? Do you take the position that unless someone can prove it to you, you will never be able to judge whether one position is more likely than another? If not, why are you treating this one differently?

Price presented a whole bunch of arguments other than linguistic. It is becoming very clear that you will not consider non-linguistic arguments for the TF because of your position regarding corrupt text. Am I right about this or not?



It is not fruitful to try and reconstruct the text.

Nor is it relevant.

But I do have an argument regarding why the entire text was not interpolated by the same person: It is the opposite of PJay's approach. Rather than say the interpolator has 'fatigue' and that is why he contradicts himself, changes his mind, etc..I say that contradiction in motive and content is indicative of more than one writer.

More specifically,

The evidence of insertions supporting more than one author is the mixture of Christian and non-Christian language. We know that a non-Christian would not have said "He was the Christ". And we know that a Christian would not have normally said "tribe of Christians". The obvious question is this: Why would a Christian write "tribe of Christians" if that is not how he normally would refer to them? The answer is "to try and sound like Josephus". Why would a Christian write "Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man"? The answer is "to try and sound like Josephus".

Let's be honest. A Christian who is writing a summary of Jesus and NOT trying to sound like Josephus wouldn't write anything close to the TF. He would write something more like we find in the gospels, right?

Since "He was the Christ" clearly was not an attempt to sound like Josephus on the same level as the other attemps, but a betrayal of a Christian religious conviction, a reasonable conclusion would simply be this: The same person probably didn't write both passages.

This means the passage was partially interpolated. The question is whether the earlier text was also interpolated or was Josephan. We can show similarities, maybe even striking similarities, but the fact is that we cannot prove it was written by Josephus, but so what? We can't prove Josephus wrote anything else either on a linguistic basis. Just as we require other evidences then to show a likelihood that Josephus wrote a passage in Jewish War, we require other evidences to show a likelihood that he wrote something about Jesus in the TF section.

The inability to reconstruct exactly makes some of the those other evidences less clear, but has no bearing on others. That doesn't mean we shouldn't consider them though..we have the 'clarity' problem on most of the issues here..



That's become one of your favorite phrases to use with me, but you appear to be assuming that I am saying the relationship everybody knew about was biological. I am not. It could be that special 'brothers of the Lord' clique that James was in but Peter and John weren't. I'm telling you why there was no need for him to distinguish a biological relationship with the "Lord's brother(s)" IF that is what it was.



Yes. Do what is simple for you then. I prefer to deal with what we have instead of dismiss it as you do.


This is just a repeat of your contention that unless we have a recoverable source to work with, we have nothing to examine. What bearing does the exact content have on your argument that the passage is out of context -- unnaturally squeezed in between two otherwise smooth 3.2-3.4 passages? The answer is none whatsoever. Take out a few phrases and we still don't have that 'uproar' you require, and we still don't have a beginning or ending that tie to their surrounding passages. Yet, your very argument for rejecting it appears to be something you think should be disregarded because your position on not being able to recover the text is FINAL. You need nothing else in order to dismiss the text as corrupt, and therefore unexaminable. Your 'context' argument is a waste of time based on your reasoning here.

I maintain that it is not, and should be part of the overall examination.

You both can have the last word.

Ted

spin

You are taking me the wrong way. I'm not accepting your "but what about this guy who you shouldn't be arguing against" non-response.

(You know the old saying: "if the foo shits, wear it.")

It's not a matter of distinguishing. It's a matter of taking for granted what Paul usually means by the term, until forced to think something else.

If you lived in a scientology community you would know what "academy" or "auditing" meant and it certainly wouldn't be what we would mean. It is taken for granted in that community what the special terms mean. Your common sense won't help you deal with it.

You are flouting Occam's Razor without any good reason.

I think I'll leave me to do the linguistics.

Your arbitrariness and rejection of Occam's Razor will do you a lot of good.

Toto

Showing that one position is more likely than another is a stab at proving that it is true. I fail to see what this quibble is about.

This is not true, and I don't know why you make this statement. Arguments based on the non-appearance of the TF in the patristic literature are relevant, but they all go against your position.

You keep forcing me to go back and try to read that essay. Most of Layman's arguments are based on the compatibility of the language. He also argues that there are no significant textual variations, but the texts all date from the 10th century. His other arguments appear equally flimsy to me - he comes up with rather ad hoc excuses for anomalies that others have found in the text. Is there one that you consider especially persuasive?

Then this is all pointless.

But we do know of Christians who did use this term.

Josephus referred to wise men, but Olson connects the "wise man" to a theme in Eusebius, so it is not out of line for a Christian to use this phrase. But Josephus would never question whether it would be lawful to call Jesus a man.

I disagree. There is nothing in the TF that is something that a Christian like Eusebius would never have written.

Are you mixing something up? What is there about "He was the Christ" that is a betrayal of Christian religious convictions?

This makes no sense to me.

maryhelena

Interesting......

Here is an idea:

The TF, minus the obvious christian bits, was originally in Antiquities. Which brings up the question of why it was not quoted by early christian writers.

1) The wise man, is it proper to call him a man, story, had a history that did not appeal to some early christian writers. ie this story, at that time, had not itself been interpolated with the name of 'Jesus'. In other words, this passage in Antiquities had yet to be considered as relevant to christian, Jesus, history.

2) Once the christian writings are canonized - gLuke would be the dominant story re it's dating structure. The Josephan wise man crucified under Pilate story, alongside the Josephan dating of JtB, both in Antiquites and in the account preserved in Slavonic Josephus, places the Josephan story outside the dating confines of gLuke.

3) The problem, by the time of Eusebius, is that some people were going with the 'forgery' of a crucifixion in the 7th year of Tiberius, 21 c.e. Were they placing more relevance upon the Josephan story than that of gLuke? Were they more Jewish than Christian? ie pre gLuke rather than post gLuke. The Antiquities TF, pre 19 c.e. dating (the time when the Jews were expelled from Rome) indicates a pre gLuke dating for it's crucifixion story.

4) To attempt to resolve the problem - Eusebius updates the Josephan TF to reference 'Jesus'. Thereby, giving a christian sanction to the wise man Josephan story - and necessitating that the TF now be read in relationship to gLuke and his 15th year of Tiberius. The TF now becomes a christian source for the 'historicity' of the gospel JC - rather than an old Jewish story that goes back to that wonder-doer who had a nativity in the 15th year of Herod the Great, 25 b.c.

5) Once that step was taken, to add the name of 'Jesus' to the wise man story of Josephus - then the earlier Jewish story of the wonder-doer who had a nativity in the 15th year of Herod the Great, falls away as being too early for any christian use re it's dating structure. And thus - that bugbear of a crucifixion in the 7th year of Tiberius has been circumvented. And once that was done - and perhaps as a gesture of goodwill, an element from that old wonder-doer story is interpolated into gLuke ch.24. The hope of the followers of the wonder-doer: "but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel". A Jewish messianic hope if ever there was one - straight out of that old wonder-doer story now preserved in Slavonic Josephus.

maryhelena

Just a footnote to the above post:

It's possible that Photius had his own reasons for not mentioning the TF. Possibly he would know of a Josephan TF without the name 'Jesus' attached to it - thus would know that a mention of the name 'Jesus' attached to that story would be a christian interpolation.....