Roach Clips

i've been doing my own research into the beginnings of christianity and what evidence there is for a "historical jesus." And Josephus is touted as the earliest extra-biblical source for the "historical jesus" but it appears that the the two times jesus is mentioned in his works were forged. i would appreciate to hear the views of members of IIDB on this issue and any help in understanding whether or not these passages where added in after the fact by christians.

Chris Weimer

I would disregard Wikipedia entirely on the subject and do your searches through here.

Start with Peter Kirby's Excellent Analyis, read up on some problems with my post here and then searches should bring out the rest.

Roger Pearse

I second this view. I have tried, myself, to correct some egregrious errors of fact on this subject and had my changes reverted by people who didn't know what they were talking about but were nevertheless certain they were right.

You should distinguish between the two passages. The short passage has always been generally considered authentic:

'Almost all scholars have accepted as authentic Josephus' reference (Ant.20.200) to James, "the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ."' -- Louis H. Feldman, Josephus and modern scholarship (1937-1980), De Gruyter (1984), p.705. {This work is a bibliography of scholarship, rather than a book, and the quote introduces a series of references.}

'While Schürer's dismissal of the Testimonium was more typical of his age than remarkable, Schürer's argument that the passage on James the brother of Jesus in Book 20 of Antiquities was likewise forged was, and remains, unusual.' -- Alice Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times. Studies in Biblical Literature 36. New York (2003). {Whealey's book is a study of the attitudes of scholars down the centuries. She adds a footnote to this, in which she cites the four volume Dictionary of Christian Biography as evidence that Schürer's views were remarkable in his time (ca. 1900) also.}

The so-called Testimonium Flavianum was generally considered an interpolation between about 1750 and 1900; the 20th century has seen a move among scholars towards generally considering it genuine but corrupt, but with substantial minorities in favour of 'complete interpolation' and 'completely genuine'.

For what it's worth, as an amateur, I believe that it is largely authentic but damaged in transmission. I suspect that Eusebius of Caesarea's copy had suffered damage and been clumsily repaired. Unfortunately since his Ecclesiastical History is a very common work and always was, while Josephus is an uncommon text and always was, the Greek text in the ancestor of all the surviving texts was 'corrected' to Eusebius' damaged version.

The agreement of the 4th century Latin version of Jerome in De viris illustribus ('He was believed to be the Christ') with that known to Michael the Syrian/Michael the Great in his 12th century Chronicle has been suggested as evidence that a Greek text of that form must have existed in Jerome's day, since Latin and Syriac did not overlap in use at that date. (So Alice Whealey in a paper read to the SBL, but not reiterated in her book). If this is so, then the vulgate text ('he was the Christ') is created by a scribe omitting the word giving the verb 'he was believed' (credebatur in Latin) leaving the prolative infinitive and accusative (to be the Christ) which a subsequent scribe, unable to restore the verb, simply modified the mood from infinitive to indicative ('to be' -> 'he was'). This simple mindless process of textual corruption and bad 'restoration' has the right sort of feel to it to me, and similar processing might explain some of the other odd-seeming wordage. But the change is really too small and possibly too obvious an emendation (made independently perhaps by both Jerome and the author of the Syriac ancestor-text used by Michael) for us to be sure of this.

All that is my uneducated opinion, of course. But I have never felt that "the tribe of the Christians hasn't yet died out" to be something a Christian would have written, but quite possible that Josephus would.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gstafleu

One thing to note is that even if you take the two passages in Josephus at face value, it still isn't very much. At best you then have a historical "maybe." He could just as well have been reporting some bits of hearsay he picked up from "the tribe of Christians." If there really was a historical Christ of any importance, we would have expected much more about him from Josephus.

Josephus, after all, came from Palestine during the time of the first uprising, and was in fact active in it. That he would not have known about any important people around that time is unlikely. Neither is it likely that he would have dedicated only two paragraphs to someone as important as Jesus. (Notice that, if we take 18.3.3. at face value, Josephus is describing something close to the Gospel Jesus, resurrection and all.)

Amaleq13

What other religious sects does Josephus refer to as a "tribe"?

Chris Weimer

None.

The Bishop

Post hoc fallacy. Of course, Jesus is important in the context of Christianity, and Christianity has been important in the world for nearly two thousand years. But Jesus need not actually have been important in the world in which he lived, and the Gospel accounts certainly do nothing to deny that.

I just finished reading a novel, ironically titled The Gospel of Judas - it's not at all certain whether the author, Simon Mawer was actually aware that there really is such a thing - which is about the discovery of a 1st Century "Christian" papyrus which details the events of Jesus's life from a different point of view - and which depicts the author, Youdas, helping Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus's dead body out of the tomb. But one thing is that the Jesus depicted here, apparently by an actual eyewitness, leads a full scale revolt against the Roman rulers, with a full blown army of insurgents. It is of course the intention of the novelist to indicate that this is what really happened (in his novelistic world), but this is precisely the kind of thing that we would expect to be heavily covered in contemporary Roman histories.

The story as we have it in the Gospels, however, depicts exactly the kind of thing that in those pre-media days could easily have bypassed a historian's regard for what was important. There was no actual uprising, just "little local difficulties" and a man was crucified as they were every day.

My point is that, often the MJ thesis is based on the question "why no uncontested contemporary extra-biblical sources?". But the "Gospel of Judas" novel indicates the kind of gospel story that should indeed raise that kind of question. The Jesus story, however, does not.

On the topic - Graham Stanton in his Gospel Truth? broke down the Testimonium into interpolations and possible original Josephian text.

Antiquities 18.3.3. "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, [if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure]. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. [He was the Christ;] and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him[, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him;] and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day."

I'm not convinced myself that the entire Testimonium is not an interpolation, however. From Kirby's article it would seem that arguments about writing style - being Josephus's or Eusebius's - are equal. My view is, if there's no compelling reason to either reject or accept it as evidence, then simply ignore it.

Chris Weimer

There are several problems with the Josephan passage. First and foremost, it is oddly out of place. Neither the section before or afterwards has anything to do with the matter, and it actually fits better together without the saying at all. Josephus, as Amaleq13 queried earlier and I answered, does not use "tribe" to indicate religious groups anywhere else - such a thought was a later development. I seriously doubt the authenticity of the passage at all.

spin

Read the f*cking archives. This has been debated ad nauseum.

1) Josephus the practising Jew simply didn't call Jesus the "messiah" (christos), so the one text has clearly been tampered with;

2) the christian apologists' fudging over "so-called (christ)" (in the second Jesus reference) is blatant stupidity, as the facetiousness takes into no account the fact that the underlying Greek is the same as what Matt. 1:16 uses ("called christ"), so the same problem in #1 applies;

3) it is only in these references to Jesus that the Josephan text refers to a messiah, ie it is not language that Josephus used, especially when the Greek word christos outside christian circles meant "ointment";

and there are numerous other problems with the Jesus references in the Josephan text. Now there are those willing to pick out the fly shit from the buttered bread fallen on the floor but reasonable people wouldn't eat it. The text which mentions Jesus have been tampered with, therefore the likelihood the the text is spurious is extremely high and it is totally arbitrary to say that one can remove the offending bits (the seen fly shit) and think that the rest is palatable.

"The growing concensus is that the passage is not entirely forged, but it is difficult to be sure what the original passage said."

I have said many times that history is not democratic. We work in a tyranny of evidence. So WGAF about growing concensuses? Every kid and his dog are free to have an opinion, but that's not very useful for scholarship.


spin

Steven Carr

Eusebius is the first person to say that Josephus referred to 'the tribe of Christians' .

Eusebius also said Tertullian referred to the tribe of Christians. He did not.

Eusebius also said Trajan referred to the tribe of Christians. He did not.

So perhaps Josephus did not either?