spin

I was reading Josephus in the effort to write another Wiki page about Zenodorus the son of Lysanias, when I came across an interesting description in AJ 15.357-8.

First, here's the well-known passage about the Gadarene demoniac from Mt 8

28 When He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, two men who were demon-possessed met Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way. 29 And they cried out, saying, “What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” 30 Now there was a herd of many swine feeding at a distance from them. 31 The demons began to entreat Him, saying, “If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.” 32 And He said to them, “Go!” And they came out and went into the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters.

Mark's version is more colorful and includes this section:

8 For He had been saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And He was asking him, “What is your name?” And he said to Him, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” 10 And he began to implore Him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. 12 The demons implored Him, saying, “Send us into the swine so that we may enter them.” 13 Jesus gave them permission. And coming out, the unclean spirits entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, about two thousand of them; and they were drowned in the sea.

Turning to the Josephus passage, Herod the Great was given charge of the area south of Damascus to bring back under control aftter some years of brignadry centered there, so Herod prosecuted his task with his usual zeal to please Augustus. The inhabitants of Gadara felt hardly abused by Herod and, urged on by Zenodorus, made charges against him to Augustus who was then in Syria.

They accused Herod of injuries, and plunderings, and overthrowing of temples. But he stood unconcerned, and was ready to make his defense. However, Caesar gave him his right hand, and remitted nothing of his kindness to him, upon this disturbance by the multitude; and indeed these things were alleged the first day, but the hearing proceeded no further; for as the Gadarenes saw the inclination of Caesar and of his assessors, and expected, as they had reason to do, that they should be delivered up to the king, some of them, out of a dread of the torments they might undergo, cut their own throats in the night time, and some of them threw themselves down precipices, and others of them cast themselves into the river, and destroyed themselves of their own accord. AJ 15.357-8 (15.10.3) -- Whiston partly modernized

Am I alone in seeing a similarities between these stories? Is there a historical kernel to the Gadarene demoniac story?


spin

Clivedurdle

Would not the various computer programmes used to seek out plagiarism be of value if they were used on the complete works of Josephus and the Gospels, with Josephus as the source text?

There may be many more interesting connections.

andrewcriddle

One problem is that Mark (probably) has the incident occur at Gerasa not Gadara. The location in Mark is (probably) the original one for the story.

Andrew Criddle

spin

You're back to your "probably" opinions again! The Josephus material might tip the Marcan evidence away from Gerasa. You can understand Gadara being corrected to Gerasa due to the difficulties of location. The sea is a lot further from Gadara, so Gadara may be a lectio difficilior. Josephus could explain why Gadara in the first place. The hypothesis would be: the Marcan writing with Gadara was used by Matt, then it was changed to the more "reasonable" Gerasa, used by Luke.


spin

the_cave

Actually, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Alexandrian evidence seems to be split--Alexandrinus does have Gadara, but Sinaticus [ETA: ok, and p75] has Gerasa. JoeWallack has fortunately summarized the evidence:

http://www.freeratio.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=205497

Now...it could be possible that Matthew read Josephus, noticed the similarity, and "corrected" it to Gadara. That would actually not surprise me. Furthermore the connections between Matthew-Q and War are much more evident than Markan ones (which seem basically absent).

The original text, however, either had nothing to do with these events near Gadara and any resemblance is coincidental, or else it not based off of Josephus (rather likely I must say), but rather off of oral history or some other source which did not mention Gadara.

spin

Josephus doesn't show signs of working from oral histories. He uses sources that we can mostly find. His material seems to fit time and interest of his source Nicholaos of Damascus. If there is a connection between the two accounts, then the gospel account would come from a very different route, unrelated to a literary source, as its subject has been transmogrified.

That there is good support for Gadara in Mk should make one more cautious of using Sinaiticus to dictate, when you have an outside indicator as we have with Josephus.


spin

the_cave

Right...that's what I'm saying..."original text" in my case referring to the original Markan version.

But...you just showed that Josephus is not a very good outside indicator of the Markan account.

spin

Josephus is an independent indicator for the story of destruction in water in a Gadarene context. He has nothing to do with Mark directly at all. He merely preserves a detail of the original story, a detail available in Matt. and some manuscripts of Mark, including Syriac translations.


spin

JoyJuice

“My name is Legion; for we are many"

What is the name for Roman armies again? .....were they called Legions?

Clivedurdle

Using Occam, does Q become an unnecessary complication if Josephus and Roman political objectives are factored in to the process that led to the creation of the gospels?