andrewcriddle

One of the points about Slavonic Josephus that I find puzzling are the parallels between it and Pseudo-Hegesippus - online at http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/index.htm#Hegesippus

Andrew Criddle

the_cave

This is all true, but it still doesn't explain why he would deliberately write non-canonical material. Perhaps I should explain what I mean by "non-canonical": I don't just mean apocryphal; I mean explicitly counter to gospel tradition--like the example I provided, of two separate arrests of Jesus. (Another is the bribing of Pilate, not Judas).

Check the online version at Google Books that I provided a link to

But yes, Malalas is referenced in the footnotes--my point is just that those Malalas passages do not appear in the text, as it appears in the Leeming translation.

(Curiously, many of the insertions are explicitly labeled "Josephus" in the margin of one of the medieval manuscrips--generally speaking, the insertions so labeled are those which appear in the Rumanian manuscript known, misleadingly, as the "Rumanian Josephus", so my guess is that the "Josephus" tags are just the trace of the Rumanian editor going through the Old Russian manuscript, but it is a bit intriguing--who would label non-Josephean passages as Josephean, yet leave the actual Josephus passages unlabled as Josephean??)

the_cave

Indeed--I have a few things to say about that, too, if I find the time...

Pataphysician

I don't see why this shows any drawing from the Cross Gospel, psalm 118 is a well known psalm and makes complete sense to be used here.

I also don't find much historical here, as there is a completely understandable thematic reason for the author to do this. If the heart of the gospel is actually anti-messianic(of the Jewish War typology), this plays on a well know tradition (Sanhedrin 98a) that god will always send a messiah, but the messiah one gets is the messiah on deserves, and a wicked generation shall not get a messiah on the Mount of Olives ready to fight (Zechariah 14 messiah), but a lowly one one on a donkey (Zechariah 9 messiah). If they ignore this sign of their own wickedness, they will suffer the consequences. Jesus is accepted by the populace when he rides in on a donkey, but rejected when he takes up a sword later mounted on the Mount of Olives(second Zechariah 14 messiah). The symbolism is that this generation is wicked, and does not understand the sign that god gave them of their wickedness and repent. They accept wickedness and reject goodness, this is why the Messiah would wish to be delivered from this time (evil generation). In a generation Jerusalem will be destroyed.

the_cave

I wouldn't say it draws directly--the parallel of being hailed as the messiah, followed by Jesus' request to be delivered from that role, links GJohn (perhaps) to the Slavonic Testimonium. The Slavonic insertions, in turn, seem possibly linked to the Cross Gospel.

I am not arguing for historicity specifically from the passage in GJohn. My main argument has to do with 1) an early interpolated version of Josephus, and 2) its relationship with the Cross Gospel. (I also happen to think that the Slavonic Testimonium has some odd elements that don't seem to be midrashic, but that's a secondary argument for now.)

the_cave

Let's start here: Crossan uses the Gospel of Peter as a witness to the Cross Gospel. Even without investigating that, we can ask: where is Judas in GPet? After the crucifixion, GPet speaks of "we twelve disciples"--but how could there be twelve disciples if Judas had betrayed Jesus? This suggests either that in GPet, Judas was not counted as one of the twelve disciples, or that Judas' betrayal is not to be found in the missing portion of GPet.

In the Slavonic TF, it is not Judas who is bribed to turn over Jesus; it is Pilate directly, and indeed it is Pilate who arrests him. How could this happen if the gospel account that the author of the text behind the Slavonic TF (IMO, an early Greek text) was using featured Judas as the betrayer? But the only gospel tradition that we know of where Judas does not seem to appear is...GPet.

I admit I can't prove very well that the author of what I'll call the "pseudo TF" (i.e. the hypothetical Greek prototype of the Slavonic/Old Russian TF) used the Cross Gospel, and not GPet. But GPet already shows evidence of borrowing from Josephus--Joseph of Arimathea is there, as well as--surprise, surprise--Petronius the centurion! I find it unlikely that someone would crib from GPet into War, and not make anything out of the fact that one of the most important witnesses to the crucifixion in GPet suddenly shows up in War a few paragraphs later! So the pseudo TF to me seems to betray the use of an earlier tradition--one which informed both GPet and the pseudo TF. (As for how Petronius ends up in GPet, that's beyond me--but the fact that the centurion from the pericope of the Centurion's Servant is clearly a direct borrowing from either Josephus's Petronius, or from some source that Josephus used, is surely related to Petronius' appearance in GPet...in fact it leads me to suspect that GPet--and Josephus and/or his sources, for that matter--has a lot more to do with the canonical gospels than anyone thinks...and with "Q" as well...)