Vorkosigan

According to this Zindler article:

http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html

The Dutch humanist scholar and theologian Gerhard Johan Voss (Vossius) possesed a manuscript of Josephus without the TF. He cited this text.

11. L. Gordon Rylands, Did Jesus Ever Live?, Watts & Co., London, 1929, p. 20.

Does anyone know anything about this manuscript or this citation? The Rylands cite is apparently the origin of all of the net-claims about this alleged manuscript.

Vorkosigan

ichabod crane

Golly, Vork, you ask easy questions! I remember brushing up on Vossius back when I was in seventh grade ...

Anyway, there's a copy of his "De theologia gentili" in a Uni library near where I live, so I'll have a look at that sometime, but if it's not translated, which it doesn't look like, I don't like my chances. I can look in some other Uni libraries when I have a chance. But I can't see anyway of answering your question (which is important) without checking the primary sources, which will probably be rather tedious.

Unless someone can give us a hint? A more specific reference, anyone?

Vorkosigan

English translation by Emerson in, "Am. Bibl. Repository" for 1832.

Hmmm....let me rummage through my back issues of Am. Bibl. Repository. I think keep them on the same shelf with my copies of the Proceedings of the Tagalog-Eskimo Simultaneous Interpreters Association....

Dead end at Project Gutenburg for Voss....

Vorkosigan

Toto

Gerhard Johann Vossius (Voss) sounds like an interesting person. It's not clear where he would have discussed having this copy of Josephus. edited to add: the above quote was apparently scanned from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and there are some obvious scanning errors in the Latin.

Toto

Search for American Biblical Repository at http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcp...4041a39a0.html

nzarh

I've often wondered about this myself. I'm guessing Rylands derived this from Arthur Drews' Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk) (1912) which makes the same statement. Unfortunately Drews doesn't give any supporting notes or references for the claim either.

Vorkosigan

I fired off an email to Zindler, but got only silence. <shrug>

Vorkosigan

fta

Just to confuse matters further, Drews and Rylands don't specify which "Vossius" they are referring to. According to the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, G.J. Vossius (Dutch Protestant) had several sons who were also scholars, not to mention a Belgian Catholic contemporary of the same name!

Vorkosigan

Hmmm....<sigh>

andrewcriddle

I think I have discovered where the claim about Voss comes from.

If one looks up the original 17/18th century essays about
the TF one finds references to a note by Isaac Voss(ius)
concerning an ancient text (before the 8th century)
subsequently lost, in which a passage from the TF is
missing.

See for example the essays by Thomas Ittig(ius) 1691 and
Charles Daubuz 1706 both republished as appendixes in
Sigebert Havercamp's massive edition of Josephus 1726
which is where I read them.

However these are not references to a manuscript lacking
the TF as a whole but to one lacking the phrase 'if it be
lawful to call him a man' a phrase generally regarded by
defenders of the TF as being a later Christian interpolation
in what Josephus originally wrote.

What I think must have happened is that this claim about a
very ancient manuscript now lost, which allegedly lacked an
interpolation in the TF was misinterpreted by a later scholar
as referring to a manuscript lacking the whole TF.

(I may write a more detailed account later of precisely what
Isaac Voss(ius) claimed and what weight should be given to it
but it seems clear that this is about the earliest form of the TF
not about its presence or absence. )

Andrew Criddle

(Thanks to Cambridge University Library Rare Books Room for
providing access to the relevant books.)