mountainman

Well done Joe,

You may also want to make provision for that datum raised by Goldberg -
A number of positions are carefully weighed in an article examining textual coincidences between the TF and the Emmaus narrative in Luke. [The Coincidences of the Emmaus Narrative of Luke and the TF, Gary Goldberg, 1995] The result indicates that if these textual coincidences are not the result of chance, at least two possibilities emerge.

The first is that the TF is genuine and that Josephus and Luke may have shared a common source. The second is that the TF is a forgery, and that the interpolator may have been heavily influenced by Luke.

Best wishes,


Pete

JoeWallack

JW:
Note that the legendary Peter (Kirby) has already gone through here Testimonium Flavianum and concludes that the TF is F'd. Regarding familiarity of the Fathers with Josephus, Peter, the first Bishop of ECW, is alleged to have written:

JW:
An observation for my fellow truth-speakers here. Note that as we move forward through the Fathers, the potential sources of Josephus for subsequent fathers multiplies faster than the mustard seed, as each father who mentions/refers to Josephus creates a new/additional source for subsequent fathers to be interested in as they create their own Talmud.

Also note the dispute over whether Justin was familiar with Josephus.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

JoeWallack

JW:
Let's start filling in a few key details here to see just how good the argument from silence is:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...origen161.html

JW:
And so Origen records for Patristerity that Josephus Antiquities of the Jews contains valuable information for OCD. Now the Fathers no longer need Josephus to alert them to Josephus, they have Origen, one of their own. And so the potential sources here for Fathers to be interested in has now increased exponentially.

And just so no Liar for Jesus can claim that the Fathers may have specifically been unaware of the existence of Book 20:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101610.htm

What Church Father would not be familiar with Origen and/or other Church Father references to Origen here?



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

the_cave

And of those 14, only four can be shown to refer to Antiquities at all. The rest never mention it, so why assume they knew it?

The four who do are Irenaeus, Clement, Hippolytus, and Origen.

What does that have to do with anything?

Read what Origen says--he can't be quoting from Antiquities, because...there's no such passage in Antiquities! It isn't even implied in Antiquities at all.

Do we even know that Origen read Antiquities? Where he mentions Antiquities 18, he misquotes the passage about John, saying John baptized for purification--but that's not what Josephus said. Now, maybe Origen is misquoting Josephus. It's an odd way of trying to prove your point, but then again people do it all the time.

But whenever he talks about James, he seems to be talking about Hegesippus, not Josephus! Could his supposed information about John and Jesus be coming from Hegesippus as well?

Furthermore, I'm still a bit confused as to why Origen is necessarily evidence against the presence of the TF in his copy of Antiquities. It is evidence against the TF in its present form, yes--and it would also be evidence against it at all, except for the fact that 1) Origen does mention Jesus and the crucifixion in Against Celsus 1.47, and 2) there is other evidence of an unstable tradition concerning "He was the Christ" in other authors.

Irenaeus is suspect because all we have is a fragmentary quotation from him that seems to refer to the early books of Antiquities. This hardly seems like valid evidence that he didn't know of a TF. And since Irenaeus gets Pilate's chronology wrong, it seems like he didn't really know Antiquities well at all

That leaves Clement and Hippolytus. Both do legitimately use the earlier chapters of Antiquities. But there's no reason in those works for them to mention Antiquities 18. The argument that they should have amounts to "If they knew an early chapter of Antiquities, then they must have known about the TF if it existed."

But this just looks like a version of the argument that all of the other authors should have known about the TF as well. "If an author knew Josephus at all, then they must have known about the TF if it existed." But I don't see why that's likely at all.

Now ok, it's more likely that someone who'd read the first few chapters of Antiquities would know about a TF. But is it necessarily true?

We'll leave aside for now the argument that if they knew about the TF, then they would have mentioned it. We can at least agree that it's plausible that if the TF in its present form, with its claim "He was the Christ" was in Antiquities, apologists would probably have mentioned it now and then.

So we do have Clement and Hippolytus. But their silence is ambiguous. And even if the TF were an interpolation, why assume that Eusebius did it? It seems much more plausible that someone else did it for him, and he found it in his copy. At the very least, if Origen is evidence of the absence of the TF from Antiquities (and again, I'm not sure he is), that would simply give us a range for the interpolation: between 250 and 325CE, probably closer to the earlier end of the spectrum to give it time to propagate.

And if someone could interpolate the TF prior to Eusebius (and yes, they could have), why later, rather than earlier? If there was an interpolation, there would have been two different textual traditions; one with the TF, one without. Authors who mention the TF had their hands on one textual tradition; authors who didn't had their hands on another.

But that doesn't mean the tradition began with Eusebius. It just means that by then, it had propagated to the point where he noticed it. So it could have begun even before Origen, or Hippolytus (or even Clement)--it just hadn't propagated to the point where they noticed it.

Which is all just to say that the mere absence of the TF even the few authors who new Antiquities prior to Eusebius does not imply Eusebian authorship. At most it could mean the TF was interpolated. Eusebian authorship would have to be established via other means (vocabulary, for example, as Ken Olson has tried to do).

aa5874

Justin Martyr did mention the books of Josephus and did appear to be familiar with their contents. He mentioned Antiquities of the Jews and claimed Josephus dicussed Moses in the very book.

Jusstin Martyr in "Hortatory Address to the Greeks" Justin Martyr in "Hortatory Address to the Greeks"
And further if the TF was originally in Antiquities of the Jews it is likely that many many Jesus believers would have known that the passage existed even if they might have never read Antiquities of the Jews.

Just like many many Jesus believers today have heard about the TF even though they might not have ever read the writings of Josephus. Many persons know about Tacitus Annals 15.44 yet have never read Annals.

And other point, whoever interpolated the writings of Josephus must have access to a "master copy" or was in some position where the copy that was being manipulated would been regarded as authentic and then would replace the "master copy" after the manipulation.

neilgodfrey

Important quibble -- argument from the thematic and philosophical and political interests and narrative context of Antiquities, in particular book 18, itself, which I hope to complete in next few days.

This is not the same as an argument from silence, although I do address that too. -- But as much as an argument from various contexts.

Also think the expression "argument from silence" is too broad a brush that fails to distinguish legitimate contextual arguments from simplistic sophistry.

Neil

the_cave

This is no longer attributed to Justin Martyr, but rather to pseudo-Justin. Nevertheless, it may date to the mid-third century, so it is arguably a fifth witness to the absence of the TF in Antiquities. However, like all the others, it only refers to the earliest books of Antiquities, so the author's awareness of Antiquities 18 is somewhat in doubt.

In its current form, I agree that it is somewhat likely that at least one apologist would have become aware of it before Eusebius.

To my knowledge there were no such "master copies" in antiquity. Each transcription became its own "master copy", if you see what I mean. I don't know that one had more authority over another. Though I could see an argument being made for library copies being more authentic than others. But it's easy for me to believe that the interpolation could have been made prior to Eusebius, and he was the first to take notice of it. It's much harder for me to believe that he was the first to make the interpolation--for there must still have been many copies without it, and the forgery would have been obvious.

Instead, if the interpolation were made earlier, then there would have been time for it to spread unnoticed.

JoeWallack

JW:
A note to my fellow truth-speakers here that I deliberately added Civil Court to the Thread title. In Civil Court decisions are made based on a majority of the available evidence. I think at this point already, everyone would agree that if you had to pick one person for forgery of the TF, it would be Eusebius. As Yakov Smirnoff used to explain when making fun of Cleveland:

"In every country is one city people make fun off. In Soviet Union...is Cleveland."

In Civil Court, Motive and Opportunity is enough to convict without any direct evidence or even circumstantial evidence.

Let's lay out the case against Eusebius for forgery, or at least legitimization, in summary judgment form:

MOTIVE

We would all agree that Eusebius had motive to forge/legitimize the TF.


OPPORTUNITY

The TF is created close to when Constantine becomes emperor c.312. With apologies to Andrew, at this point Eusebius does not require Constantine to be omnipotent, he only needs his protection. It removes the possibility of Legionairre Columbo coming to his library door and telling him to hand over his copy of Josephus for "examination" in Rome.

Note that the critics likely to call Christianity on the forgery, Celsus and Porphyry, are before Constantine. Once Constantine/Christianity take control it probably would have been very bad for your health to publicly accuse Eusebius of forgery.


CIRCUMSTANTIAL

1) Discovery

1 - No evidence for the TF before Eusebius

1) General silence - expectation that if the
TF existed it would have been used due to its importance
to Christianity.

2) Specific silence - http://vridar.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/josephus/

ca.140’s CE Justin Martyr

For the Cave, consider that Justin was a philosopher in
Rome and his interests were:

1) Jesus

2) 1st century Israel

3) Arguing with Pagan and Jewish philosophers

The related question should be:

Why wouldn't Justin be familiar with Josephus?

I also wonder if the Cave is even willing to concede that
extant Church Father writings prove the Fathers could
read and write. Maybe they just dictated, or maybe they
became blind or maybe they were temporarily sight-
impared while Josephus was in front of them.

ca.170’s CE Theophilus - uses Josephus

ca.180’s CE Irenaeus - uses Josephus

ca.190’s CE Clement of Alexandria - uses Josephus

ca.200’s CE Tertullian - uses Josephus

ca.200’s CE Minucius Felix - uses Josephus

ca.210’s CE Hippolytus - uses Josephus

ca.220’s CE Sextus Julius Africanus - uses Josephus

ca.230’s CE Origen - uses Josephus

ca.240’s CE Cyprian

ca.270’s CE Anatolius - uses Josephus

ca.290’s CE Arnobius

ca.300’s CE Methodius - uses Josephus

ca.300’s CE Lactantius

Of the 14 Fathers here who show no awareness of the TF
10 show use of Josephus. Comically, Roger Pearse started this
list in order to demonstrate that the Fathers in general would
have no interest in Josephus and ends up demonstrating that
the conclusion he disputes is correct.

2 - Evidence that the TF was created during the career of Eusebius

2) Familiarity - Parallels to Eusebius' own Adversus Hieroclem.

3) Language - The key phrases are generally Eusebian and not Josephan.

4) Context - The context of the TF is contrary to Josephus.

5) Manuscript - Relative uniformity of the TF post Eusebian.

6) Lack of any coherent argument for originality.



Joseph

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

aa5874

Where can it be found that Hortatory Address to the Greeks is no longer atrributed to Justin Martyr?

And it does not logically follow that it is doubtful the author was not aware of Antiquities 18 because he was making commentaries on early parts that deal with Moses.




I mean in order for the forged TF to become "authenticated", it may have been a copy that was in a Library. People who used the Library and read the new version of Antiquities 18.3.3 may have thought it was a genuine and authorised amendment.

If there was a Library and the Library had Antiquities without the TF, then it would be noticed that there were forged copies of Antiquities very early.

the_cave

Odd that this means they would also be the academic criteria, but I guess you are entitled to your opinions

That is a great question, entirely independent from the question of the TF. I have no idea why Justin appears to be unfamiliar with Josephus. Do you have a good reason why? I really have no idea.

Of course they could. How is this relevant?

But not Antiquities

But evidence that he knew Antiquities is fragmentary and ambiguous.

Yes, Clement is a relatively good argument for the absence of the TF from Antiquities. My advice is to stick with the good arguments, not the bad ones

but not Antiquities

It's not even clear Minucius had read Josephus at all.

Sure, Hippolytus is also a good argument. I've said so.

Unclear--he may be using Josephus' sources.

Again, Origen is ambiguous.

Doesn't seem to know Josephus at all.

but not Antiquities

Doesn't seem to know Josephus at all.

but not Antiquities

Doesn't seem to know Josephus at all.

And only two can definitely be said to use Antiquities, plus two more ambiguous cases.

Yes, there are Eusebian parallels. But why can't they just be evidence that Eusebius knew the TF?

No, some of them are Josephan. But it turns out Eusebius might just be imitating Josephus. But if Eusebius can imitate Josephus in the TF...why couldn't he be imitating the TF in his other writings?

Yes.

Again, this is wrong. The Syrian and Arabic versions are different. The Slavonic version is very different, too. Even Jerome's version is different.

There is not a good coherent argument for Josephan authorship, no. But for authorship by someone else besides Eusebius?

Why not?