Zeichman

It nonetheless shows that a group of Christians were asserting the existence of a historical Jesus then. I would run contrary to Doherty's trajectory.

I'm not asserting authenticity. I'm simply discussing prima facie interpretation. It means that the authors presumably believed Jesus to have been as historical as was John the Baptist, the Pillars, Pilate, Herod, etc. There isn't really a reason to think that the authors did not believe Jesus was historical.

Toto

Doherty's trajectory is that Paul in the mid-first century believed in a spiritual savior, and Mark was written about 80 CE. There's enough time there for Josephus to hear some story about how Christianity got started. And, of course, we don't know what the authentic core really looked like.

This would be incompatible with mythicists who push the development of a historicized Jesus later into the second century.

Amaleq13

It relates to the prima facie nature of the story which is somehow in dispute.

Antipope Innocent II

Does Antiquities XX:9 also "represent second hand information from a Christian source"? The circumstances of the dismissal of the High Priest doesn't sound like something that Josephus would only know via Christian sources.

It's rather funny how regularly MJers and Dohertyites skip and dance around this other Jesus reference in Josephus ... :huh:

Toto

The Antiquities mention has been discussed ad nauseum here and elsewhere. I think you can find a thread in the archives where spin demonstrates how awkward the construction is. There's no reason why it could not have been a marginal note copied into the text.

Antipope Innocent II

Yes. It's still interesting how keen MJers are to bang on about the clearly doctored TF and are less keen to tackle this other reference to Jesus.

Oh, well that settles it then. :notworthy:


Or perhaps it was inserted by Martians? Funny sort of interpolation though, what with it referring to a rather noticeable political event and everything ...

Toto

Everyone talks more about the TF - there's more to talk about. The TF is an obvious forgery. The Antiquities reference gives you less to work with.

You claimed that no one discussed it - I gave you an example of a lengthy discussion. You react with mockery.

There is a reference to James the Brother of Jesus - this Jesus could have referred to the Jesus referred to at the beginning of the section. The odd phrase "called the Christ" could easily have been a marginal note from one of the myriad of Christian scribes who copied the text, probably an innocent insertion meant to clarify what that scribe thought was what was true.

It seems unlikely that Josephus would have used the term Christ to refer to Jesus.

What more do you want to discuss?

Roger Pearse

That was my reaction too. Von Daniken did this kind of argument much better, IMHO, and with the same degree of validity; any excuse or speculation will do to dispose of inconvenient evidence, while no evidence is produced for the theory being sold.

The last time I looked the short reference was accepted as genuine by just about every Josephus scholar living and dead apart from Emil Schurer, ca. 1900.

The TF 'feels' wrong somehow, but there is no scholarly unanimity that it is inauthentic (unlike a century ago), or what precisely is wrong with it. The idea that it is a 4th century composition by Eusebius has never been generally accepted, and has only ever been advanced by atheist Jewish scholar Solomon Zeitlin (who asserted that the Dead Sea Scrolls were medieval forgeries) and now by Ken Olson.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

I'm going to take this paragraph by gurugeorge out of context in an attempt to bring out some underlying issues.

There is clearly a sense in which the ahistorical possibilities cannot be eliminated. It is true but IMO uninteresting that a historical Jesus cannot be rigorously established in the sense that a historical Alexander the Great can be established.

What the lecturer mentioned by Zeichman presumably beliefs, is that his brief discussion of the evidence for historicity establishes that a historical Jesus is not a doubtful or improbable figure in anything like the sense that (for different reasons) a historical Ebion, a historical King Arthur and a historical St Brigid of Kildare are doubtful or improbable figures.

There are IMO two issues or problems with this lecturer's position.

i/ Various Mythicists on this forum and elsewhere have raised intersting arguments that, in fact, the historical Jesus is dubious to around the same extent that Brigid or Arthur or Ebion is dubious. The lecturer has probably not come across these arguments and in principle (given the time constraints of the course) his or her discussion would be improved by him or her being familiar with these arguments and the arguments against them. On the other hand these arguments for ahistoricity are not IMO (at least in the present state of the evidence) particularly convincing and the lecturer could incorporate discussion of these points and still firmly support historicity.

ii/ For many (maybe most) Mythicists, however, the main reason for doubting historicity seems to be the absence of evidence for Jesus genuinely independent of his followers. In one sense at least this is true. Every surviving scrap of evidence for Jesus is there because whatever happened in Palestine under Pontius Pilate, it was not the end of the story. However the lecturer would plausibly regard this sort of position as involving either a general skepticism about the possibility of doing Ancient History as normally understood, or a specific skepticism about using Christian (or Christian-influenced) material as historical evidence. The lecturer is unlikely to regard either of these forms of skepticism as a basis for a constructive discussion.

Andrew Criddle

Zeichman

What about the church fathers?


And Andrew, thanks for reiterating my point in a far more clear way than I had been doing. Those were exactly the points I was trying to make.