Toto

This will be reopened, but everyone chill out just a little.

Vinnie

Um, everyone knows Josephus I mean Jesus was probably not born on Deember 25th unless there was a mighty coincidence. We know why Christmas is on the day it is and why Halloween is on the day it is and so on. What is your point? Jesus is Josephus. Their names even start with the same letter and end with the same two. Very easy to confuse. In fact, if you reverse two letters of Josephus you end up with Joesphus. QED.

As a corollary, this shows why the Testimonium, as it now stands, is authentic. In fact, it is autobiographical-primary testimony. "So called Christ" is just a bit of modesty creeping in...

Vinnie

Petergdi

You know more than I do then. The two popular theories are:

a) replacement for a previous holiday

b) 9 months after 25th of march, based on the idea that the crucifixion was on 25 of march and that Jesus lived an integral number of years from conception to death.

I used to think I knew that a) was correct. I am no longer certain.

Peter.

Kapyong

Gday,

Actually,
Mithras was NOT born on Dec. 25th.

That's just an urban legend spread by people like AcharyaS.


K.

Vinnie

What is wrong with a?

Vinnie

Yellum Notnef

Because b further separates him from the other gods thus making him special and somehow more believable.

Petergdi

'A)' requires there to have been a big festival on the 25th of December requiring replacement. How do we know there was a big festival on the 25th to replace? The oldest reference to the feast of Sol Invictus on the 25th of December is no earlier than our first reference to Christmas on the 25th of December. I'm not saying that the theory that Christmas is a replacement holiday is false, only that I don't know that it is true.

Peter.

Chaucer

To someone coming in on the middle of such an exchange, there is something that is, at the very least, seriously, seriously misleading in so stating. These exchanges are viewable via Google, among other things. If someone new were researching this question on how scholars today view BOTH Antiq. 18 and 20, finding a careless remark like AA's would throw the new researcher totally off the scent. S/He'd assume that nothing attached to Josephus's name exists at all! Whether or not 18 or 18+20 are forgeries, an initial remark like AA's is plainly misleading and is highly irresponsible of AA at best. If flagrantly incomplete statements (to put it kindly) like AA's are not challenged on the spot, then the impact on neophyte researchers on the web of such an incomplete remark as AA's comes perilously close to the impact of a viral e-mail. There's nothing wrong with saying that in one's opinion both 18 and 20 are interpolated. There's everything wrong with saying blandly and without clarification that there are no such Josephan remarks at all, when the ms. tradition going back to the 11th century shows consistently that there are two now in the text -- whether or not some scholars today believe that one or both may be forgeries.

I'd like to see how it isn't sophistry to claim that a remark like "So from Philo and Josephus there are about 75 books from Genesis to around 93 CE and there is no mention at all of a Jesus the Messiah, the son of God, that lived during the time of Pilate", standing by itself without any amplification at all, isn't seriously incomplete and misleading at best.

Sincerely,

Chaucer

Buck Laser

I think there was guy named Jesus who came from Nazareth. He was a pretty good teacher, but I don't think anyone ever called him "Christ" in his lifetime. He did attract some powerful PR people who divinified him him later.

dragoon

Please correct me if I'm wrong and please forgive me (a rank newby here) for sticking my unwelcome and uninvited nose in:

This exchange is getting painful.

aa5874 made a very simple statement and nearly everybody understood what he meant. On the other hand, the very simplicity of the statement meant that it could be misinterpreted as a outright falsehood if the reader should hold aa5874 to the highest standards. Indeed, Chaucer has held aa to those rigorous standards and has used the ugly word 'liar' in this context.

At this point, would it not be good and reasonable for aa5874 to admit that his statement was much too short and much too open to technical misinterpretation and, by the standards of this forum, it should have been buttressed by extensive clarification? Would it not be good and reasonable for aa5874 to apologize and to simply add clarification even if every sentient being in the known universe knows what in hell he means?

At this point, wouldn't it be good and reasonable for Chaucer to admit that he was right all along, but only in a highly technical sense and was stretching the point to an exquisite degree? Wouldn't it be good and reasonable for Chaucer to apologize for using the ugly word 'lie' and for accusing others of nefarious intentions that probably aren't there?

Just my humble observation, for what it's worth.