DCHindley

You asked for another case of a suspended patronym: Note my comment that the Jesus who is executed along with Ananus in the War passage I cited is also not associated with any specific family.

I don't know if you have access to Robet Eisler's 1931 Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (or via: amazon.co.uk) (NOT to be confused with Robert Eisenmann's more recent James the Brother of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk)!), but he draws attention to quite a number of such loose ends in Josephus, ultimately concluding that Josephus drew from a wide variety of sources but made little effort to harmonize them or fully identify all the characters who appear in his dramatic retelling of history.

Today Eisler is considered, perhaps justly, a bit of a kook, but in his day Eisler's books were quite the rage among even seasoned critics. To his credit, he does draw attention to a number of things that most folks have overlooked. Steve Mason's recently revised book on Josephus might delve into this more deeply, but I do not have the newer edition yet.

Regardless of that, Josephus does give quite contrary descriptions of Ananus, praising him no end in _War_ and vilifying him in _Antiq_. All I'm suggesting is that some reader picked up on that, wrote a comment in the margin near Ant 20.200, and someone else misinterpreted it and modified the text during copying. He does not even have to be a Christian, as the ambiguous phrase του λεγομενου can mean anything from "being said/(who) is called" to "so-called."

However, assuming something like this does eliminate the Ant 20 passage as a reference to any of the characters mentioned in the Gospels or Acts, which has always been in sharp variance with Hegesippus' account where James is killed by being thrown over the parapet of the temple and then finished off by a whack to the head by a clothes fuller's club. To defend both accounts means explaining Hegessippus' version as a telescoped/compressed account of two events, the second of which being the method of death used by this sanhedrim, which I think is even more of a stretch.

DCH

TedM

The difference I see he is that if it is authentic the we have two strange things from Josephus: First, a mention of a brother and not father, with no further explanation. Second a mention of Christ with no explanation. The "strangeness" of both disappears IMO if he had previously referenced Jesus as having been called the Christ. Have I missed your point?

That's the interpolation option that makes the most sense to me, due to the "payoff" issue of intentional interpolation. However, if it was a gloss, why say "called" Christ? It doesn't sound like something a Christian scribe would write. And, if a non-Christian scribe wrote it, would he really have assumed this James was the one of Christian tradition (if he was aware of it), since there is no mention in the passage of Jesus Christ or James' Christian beliefs, and since the only Jesus mentioned is the son of Damneus? If he knew of the James tradition, might he not have known that Jesus' father was considered to be Joseph?

ted

Ben C Smith

That is not a bad point. Thanks for clarifying.

Now, since your hypothesis involves an intentional interpolation, what was the scribal payoff?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Josephus does this. In this same twentieth book of the Antiquities Josephus himself uses adelphonymic references to identify Herod the brother of the deceased Agrippa 20.1.3 §15; refer also to 20.5.2 §104); Felix the brother of Pallas (20.7.1 §137); Germanicus the brother of Caesar (20.8.1 §148); and Aaron the brother of Moses (20.10.1 §225).

Christ needs no explanation here because of the word called. That labels the name as a nickname. I doubt Josephus even expected his readers to have a clue as to what that name meant or any of the history behind Jewish messianism. All the phrase means is that Jesus was known as Christ, which is certainly true.

People like to point to Matthew 1.16 as a Christian instance of the phrase. My problem with the phrase is not so much that a Christian scribe would not settle on it (though that weighs in a bit) as that a connection to Matthew 1.16 is not much of a payoff.

Ben.

dog-on

Placing the James of Acts, and the Galatian interpolation, in Jerusalem as an actual figure in the first century and making him a martyr, in a non-christian document.

Probably pissed off the Marcionite church..

Ben C Smith

So a Christian scribe slightly modified Josephus in order to tick off the Marcionites?

You might excuse me for regarding that as a bit of a stretch.

Let me back up a few steps and ask you what you think is problematic about the text as it stands in the first place. What suggests an interpolation?

Ben.

spin

As you will remember, we have dealt with the issue of James at length in the past, Ben C. You are back to your old tricks of fishing for errors by removing bits without any corresponding grammatical management. You are hereby severely, though proverbially, wrapt on the knuckles for repeating the same thing.

On the subject of the text originally giving a reading of Jesus son of Damneus, rather than Jesus who was called christ, it requires a step which involves a change to the sense of the text from one Jesus to another, which is an intentional "correction" which doesn't seem to be usual in the sorts of marginal additions that one can identify. It requires content change rather than simple addition.

That's why we went through the silly waltz last time of you fishing for me to provide the original text after "brother of Jesus called christ" was removed. That's when I advocated the KISS principle. We cannot know for sure what the original form of the text was, but we can provide an approximation to satisfy your insistence.

I would find a substantive change less likely than an addition. That's why I provided you with the simplest change, "a (certain) man, James his name,..." (anQrwpon Iakwbos onoma autw -- see for example "a certain Galilean man, named Judas", BJ 2.8.1, and "a certain Jewish merchant, named Ananias, AJ 20.2.3), not because that's the way the text must have been, but because that requires minimum effort and leaves you with no grammatical issues for you to get upset about. KISS.

The interpolation is, as I have pointed out, probably a marginal note regarding James which read "brother of Jesus called christ", the form of which may be derived from a knowledge of Origen who first used it in his commentary on Matthew where the term "Jesus called christ" was initially found. A later scribe finding the marginal comment probably thought that the text had become disturbed and decided to reinsert the marginal comment. This requires no substantive changes whatsoever.

Maintaining the original marginal note, the scribe made for a rather awkward text, as I've pointed out in the past.


spin

Ben C Smith

Failing to specify a family affiliation is not the same as specifying one but later than expected.

I have accessed this book before, though I have not read all of it. I made copies of a few pages for my own edification, but the copy I had was fragile, so it did not feel right to copy the whole thing.

Do you have some examples from Eisler of suspended patronymics due to this source handling he speaks of?

I would never confuse those books, but I have confused the names Eisler and Eisenmann before!

I think the Hegesippus version is explicable simply as a holy legend accumulating around a simpler core... a core such as we find in our extant texts of Antiquities 20.

Ben.

TedM

But weren't these mentions for clarification--ie the reader would know these "brothers", from history or a prior mention? If so, the same reason would probably apply here..


But Josephus knew what "Christ" meant. This takes the label way beyond that of a nickname in his own mind. Would it make sense to make only a brief reference and with no explanation to a person who was given the title of Messiah by some people, even if the readers didn't know much about that?

ted

Ben C Smith

You are so far out of line on this one that I cannot fathom what is on your mind.

I have every right to point out that certain proposals do not make grammatical sense, and to ask for finessing of the proposal. And I will continue to do so.

Had dog-on taken off in a direction that somewhat resembled yours, I was even going to refer him to your proposal of tina. (How is that for free advertising?) But he went off by a different route.

It was not silly. I am supposed to ask for your entire proposal; I would be remiss not to. So I asked, and you answered. We then went on to other matters.

You will notice that most of the proposals on this thread are along the lines of intentional, not accidental, interpolations. I have even once so far on this thread tried to steer them in the direction of the marginal gloss hypothesis, since I regard it as more defensible. How did you miss that?

I hear a lot of barking here, spin, but there is no cat in that tree. To reprimand me for asking exactly which words are additions and which are not, and how it all works grammatically... honestly!

Ben.