aa5874

The gospels are NOT dated to the 1st century. All we have are 2nd century or later sources that describe Jesus as the Son of a Ghost that walked on water.

It is completely illogical that such sources of ADMITTED fiction and myth can be accepted as history WITHOUT corroboration.

An historical Jesus cannot ever be recovered from unreliable sources of the 2nd century or later.

LegionOnomaMoi

I'm not sure what you mean by "no explanation" and "finished product". Do you mean whether I think it is altered or not (i.e., a simple yes/no)?

Here's a simple as I can get:

1) From the point of view of word order in Greek in general and Josephus specifically, there's no problem with this passage.

2) There is very little reason, if any, to doubt that the passage has been altered from looking at the context.

3) As I mentioned in another thread, not only is "called Christ" not a christian phrase, but a statistical analysis of known scribal alterations makes it extremely unlikely that any scribe would add either "called christ" or "jesus called christ"

Conclusion: we have very good reasons to think that this passage was not altered by christians and no good reason to think that Josephus did not write it.

LegionOnomaMoi

What we also have are thousands of other copies of texts christians produced, and an extremely large sample size of ways they altered references to Jesus, from the other passage in Antiquities to Matt. 1:16. We know they added "christ" to Jesus" or "Jesus" to "christ", or "son of god" or similar things. We know they deleted "called" from "called christ" in Matt. 1:16. Yet in our hundreds and hundreds of scribal alterations, large and small, to references to Jesus, never did any scribe ADD "called" or "called christ". Remove, yes. But add?

So, if a christian scribe at one point added "called christ" to Josephus, then not only is that alone vastly improbable from a statistical point of view, but that nobody else deleted it to make it "more christian" in the centuries the text was copied by christians is even MORE improbable.

aa5874

Now, that you have "concluded" that the passage is authentic, spin disagrees, please tell us the names of the Parents of Jesus called Christ the brother of James in Antiquities of the Jews???

Was Jesus called Christ the brother of James ALIVE when Antiquities of the Jews was written???

Surely, there mere MANY characters called Jesus in the time of Josephus so we cannot ASSUME at all that there was ONLY one Jesus.

In gMark, there was a person that called himself Christ and it was predicted that Many WILL claim they were Christ. See Mark 9.38 and 13.6.

So there were multiple persons called Jesus in Antiquities and more than one person called Christ in gMark and it was expected that there would be multiple persons who would call themselves Christ.

The authenticity of AJ 20.9,1 cannot help the HJ argument.

The Historical Jesus was an OBSCURE preacher of Nazareth and his PARENTS are unknown.

Linguistics and word order resolve NOTHING.

You and Spin will argue to infinity and nothing will be accomplished.

You and Spin will always claim each other is wrong.

Please, you have the simplest task.

Name the Parents of the Historical Jesus and the Parents of Jesus called Christ the brother of James???

In Galatians , Jesus called Christ was the Son of God and Apologetic sources that mentioned Jesus called Christ in Antiquities claimed he was FATHERED by a Holy Ghost.

Linguistics and Word order is obviously NOT useful to determine a matter about relatives.

Toto

A few posts on a topic that got lost in the linguistic discussion have been split off here

maryhelena

My thanks for the response. I was simply wondering if your reading of the Greek was in some way different from, for example, the quotation found on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus#The_James_passage

So, whether Josephus himself added the word 'Christ', or later scribes added it, your position is that it is a word that Josephus would find no problem with using anyway? But would he use it for one who was accursed, hung on a tree/cross?

The 'christ' word aside, both here and in the TF, there is enough left that can be interpreted as support for the historicists case re the gospel JC (of whatever variant). Yes, some ahistoricists/mythicists argue for interpolations in Josephus in order to discredit what is there. As an ahistoricist/mythicist myself, I don't think this is the right way to go with the Josephan material. If there is no historical JC, a position that can be arrived at simply by considering the gospel JC story alongside Jewish history, then Josephus is not supporting a historical JC. On the contrary, Josephus is supporting the pseudo-historical gospel JC storyboard. Without Josephus and his mention of figures from within the gospel storyboard - there is no way that the assumption of a historical JC can be supported.

Instead of knocking the Josephan material in order to discredit it - the ahistoricist/mythicists should be embracing it as evidence for their ahistoricial gospel JC. Yes, the tables need to be turned.

Josephus is not simply a historian, he is, as modern scholarship is now aware, a prophetic historian. Josephus is not supporting a historical JC - he is supporting the pseudo-historical JC gospel storyboard, giving it a veneer of historicity. Josephus is supporting a pseudo-historical JC storyboard that is itself an interpretation, a prophetic and mythological interpretation, a philosophical re-think or appraisal, of relevant Jewish history.

Dreams and Dream Reports in the Writing of Josephus, A Traditio-Historical Analysis (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus: Rebecca Gray (or via: amazon.co.uk)

I would suggest that, while linguistics is going to help in translating the Josephan Greek words, it will not help in understanding Josephus...

spin

This is certainly the conservative christian propaganda at least, but it is simple baloney. Consider the patently false claim that "called christ" is "not a christian phrase". Let's see, where do we find examples of "called christ"? Umm, Matthew, a coupla times, and, ahh, Origen a coupla times and naturally each time regarding Jesus. Now let's consider where it's mentioned in non-christian sources, umm,... umm,... well, there's Josephus regarding Jesus, which is the case in consideration and which has notably been fiddled by christians, and there's, umm,... umm,... umm,... well, you know, there's Josephus. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

Look closely at the straight face is it delivers this tawdry artifice. Listen to this absurd bullshit again:

As I mentioned in another thread, not only is "called Christ" not a christian phrase, but a statistical analysis of known scribal alterations makes it extremely unlikely that any scribe would add either "called christ" or "jesus called christ"

This waffle, appealing to non-mentioned statistical analysis in another thread whose relevance to creeping marginalia needs to be seen, is the best defense of the assumption that "called Christ" is not a christian phrase. I think LegionOnomaMoi needs to find the middle ground between talking over someone's head and talking almost contentless froth, like that found on a cheap cappuccino. (Hmm, waffle and a cheap cappuccino!)

We do know that LegionOnomaMoi believes that "called Christ" is not a christian phrase. We also know that the basis of that belief is yet to be seen. It's the sort of crap we get out of Van Voorst and even, sadly, Louis Feldman, both of whom work with a notion of simple interpolation of the ilk of the TF, rather than the inclusion into the text of a marginal note perhaps inspired by a misunderstanding of Origen CC 1.47.

gurugeorge

Hehe, this is so cool, I'm in danger of running out of popcorn

This is why I love BC&H, to see extraordinarily clever people with SIWOTI syndrome laying into each other with a will. You think maybe LOM's got spin on the ropes and then spin comes back with a swift but punishing right hook, and LOM's on the floor, but he's not out, oh no, he's got another spew of digital ink at the ready ...

Love it, love it, love it.

Carry on gentlemen!

EarlDoherty

Actually, we do have at least one very good reason. Origen three times refers to a passage in Josephus (or at least he thinks it's in Josephus--where, we don't know, since this reference can no longer be found) in which Josephus supposedly said that the fall of Jerusalem was God's punishment on the Jews for the murder of James. That lost passage, according to Origen, contained the phrase "James, the brother of Jesus, called Christ" (though not necessarily in that word order, since Origen is not quoting directly but paraphrasing--note, however, the natural order of the words, which Origen employs all three times, unlike that of Antiquities 20).

On none of those three occasions, is Origen led to pointing out the similar reference to James in Antiquities 20, not even to remark on the contradiction which the two accounts entail. Origen's lays the blame on "the Jews" (perhaps he or the interpolator of the lost reference took a page from the account in Hegesippus). Antiquities 20 lays the blame on the Roman procurator of Judea Ananus, with prominent Jews objecting to Ananus' action and agitating for his removal.

Those two accounts are incompatible. Are we to think that Origen would not have realized this and made some comment on it? After all, he brought up the James-Jerusalem connection as the cause of the city's fall. Could he not see that Josephus' account in Antiquities 20 conflicted with it? (Regrettably, I did not stress this aspect of it in either of my books.)

Like the Testimonium, absolutely no Christian commentator refers to the Antiquities 20 reference to Jesus before Eusebius. He, by the way, unlike Origen, discusses the "lost reference" (probably drawing on Origen) and then immediately afterward points to the Antiquities 20 passage as another account of the death of James. (H.E. II, 23)

If the lost reference brought to mind the Antiquities 20 reference for Eusebius, why not for Origen?

I would say that this is an excellent reason (much more than word order) to doubt that the reference to James was present in Antiquities 20 at the time of Origen, just as his failure to appeal to any Testimonium in Antiquities 18 is good reason to doubt that there was any original discussion of Jesus there before Eusebius. Eusebius is our first witness to either of the extant references to Jesus in Josephus.

Earl Doherty

LegionOnomaMoi

This isn't a good reason at all, for the simple fact that this "lost passage" is an invention based on your misinterpretation of Origen who used Josephus "a Jerusalemite of impeccable social standing before the war, who had nevertheless castigated the Judean rebels, also describing in lurid detail the fall of Jerusalem-- thereby seeming to demonstrate the fulfillment of Jesus' predictions (e.g., Origen, C. Cels. 2.13.68-65).
Josephus, of course, had made no connection between the fall of Jerusalem and Christian claims, but it seemed possible to use him in this way: a Judean witness who wrote with unrestrained emotion about the alleged failings and crimes of his contemporariest. His pervasive celebration and defense of Judean law and culture could either by minimized, as it was by Origen, who famously credited him with being "not far from the truth" (C Cels. 1.47; Comm. Matt. 10.17), and by Eusebius, or it could be squarely faced and exploited, as it was by the fourth century writer we know as Pseudo-Hegesippus." From Mason's Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories.

There is no reason whatsoever to think that writers like Origen, who were not simply "liberal" when quoting but freely re-interpreted other authors and individuals, wouldn't feel free to connect one part of Josephus with another, despite his having never done so.

Origen does not "three times refer to a passage in Josephus" but refers to Josephus three times, and paraphrases him, and while doing so connects pieces of various passages coming to conclusions that Josephus never did.