Originally Posted by LegionOnomaMoi

Forgive me for saying so (especially if wrong), but it seems from the thread title and the response of the OP to a post I wrote earlier that the thread isn't, strictly speaking, about the arguments for interpolation or alternative theories. For example:
Scientific textbooks aside, if the purpose of the thread is really to discuss the metaphorical "anatomy of a consensus", the applicability of the book in question to the purposes for which it is used in the thread would seem to me to be relevant. Moreover, confining comments to a discussion about the TF and arguments for or against seems to miss a central point of the thread: the nature of the scholarly consensus as reflected (according to the OP) in the textbook.

Originally Posted by spin

While I can't go along with the "carefully constructed whole", it is plain that the TF doesn't fit in its present location. As I pointed out here, in the passage that follows the TF

The Greek for "another" usually implies a dualistic system, one or the other, the right hand or the left, one of two, etc. The first calamity that threw the Jews into an uproar, as I indicated here is found in AJ 18.55-62 (18.3.1-2), the second starting with the indicated clause. This leaves the TF out not being a calamity which caused the Jews to go into disarray, nor does it make sense in its location between the first and second calamities.


This is what I commented on in the same post,


I analysed it graphically previously, when talking of a piece of buttered bread which has fallen on the flyspecked floor. You can pick it up and clean off all the fly specks. Would you eat it? Fly specks can easily go unperceived.


The ugly fact is that it can't be done. Given that Feldman and others do specifically use "aforementioned", you have to find a secondary souce that contradicts it even just to quibble the issue. Otherwise, it would be deemed new work and not admissible.


Well, no. It doesn't change much, but the Arabic is relying on a source which is probably Syriac. Here's a table I prepared on four versions of the TF:

[T2]
.|
Agapius|
TF = Eus. E.H.1.11.7b-8|
Jerome (On Famous Men, 13)|
Michael Chronicle||
1|
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus.|
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man,|
At the same time there was Jesus, a wise man,|
In these times there was a wise man named Jesus,||
2|
-|
if indeed one ought to call him a man,|
if indeed it is proper to say that he was a man;|
if it is fitting for us to call him a man.||
3|
His conduct was good,|
for he was a doer of wonderful works,|
for he was an accomplisher of marvelous works|
For he was a worker of glorious deeds||
4|
and (he) was known to be virtuous.|
a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.|
and a teacher of those who freely receive true things;|
and a teacher of truth.||
5|
And many people from the Jews and other nations became his disciples.|
He won over many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles.|
he also had very many followers, as many from the Jews as from the gentiles,|
Many from among the Jews and the nations became his disciples.||
6|
-|
He was the Messiah;|
and he was believed to be Christ.|
He was thought to be the messiah,||
7|
Pilate|
When Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us,|
When by the envy of our principal ones Pilate|
but not according to the testimony of the principal men of our nation. Because of this, Pilate||
8|
condemned him to be crucified and die.|
had condemned him to the cross,|
had affixed him to a cross,|
condemned him to the cross and he died.||
9|
But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship.|
those that loved him at the first did not forsake him,|
those who had first loved him nevertheless persevered;|
For those who had loved him did not cease to love him.||
10|
They reported that he had appeared to them three days after the crucifixion, and that he was alive;|
for he appeared to them alive again the third day,|
for he appeared to them on the third day living;|
He appeared to them alive after three days.||
11|
accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah|
-|
-|
-||
12|
concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.|
as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him;|
many things, both these and other marvelous things, are in the songs of the prophets who made predictions about him.|
For the prophets of God had spoken with regard to him of such marvelous things.||
13|
-|
and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.|
Even until today the race of Christians, having obtained the word from him, has not failed.|
And the people of the Christians, named after him, has not disappeared till this day.
[/T2]
You can see from the red indications that the Arabic (Agapius) and the Syrian (Michael) have similarities, not found in the other sources, which point to a common source. However the green sections show that the version that Michael used was quite similar to that of Eusebius and Jerome, leaving the differences seen in Agapius as probably reflections of his own editorial intervention. All the securely christianizing materials seen in the TF are found in Michael (and thus deliberately omitted by Agapius), with the one exception that the claim that Jesus was the messiah is mitigated in all but Eusebius. There is no way to decide whether the simple form seen in Eusebius ("he was the christ") is original or not.

In another post in the same tread as the post of mine I refer to above, I note:

Originally Posted by Grog

All roads seem to lead through Eusebius.

Now I have a question. According to Whealey, we don't have an independent attestation of an alternate TF other than Eusebius. Yet, it seems that these sources (Agapius, Jerome, Michael) are often used as textual witnesses that an alternate TF existed. Here in these passages, Whealey seems to be assuming that an original TF exists. Doesn't that assumption collapse if there is no witness? Then, it seems to me, to become a case of cherry picking pieces of useful text out of a clearly inauthentic passage...

Your thoughts?