the_cave

In light of some other threads that have been getting attention recently, I thought I would post this just to get the ball rolling. It's still kind of hasty and unfinished, but maybe the argument can be fleshed out during the course of a discussion.


First, let me make a plea: I would please like to limit commenters here to those who are a) non-apologetic, b) critically-minded, c) capable of basic source-criticism, and d) more or less know what they are talking about. You don't have to be a professional (I am not), you just have to understand the basic issues at stake. In other words, no wobbly theories about Constantinian/Eusebian conspiracies, Flavian/Josephian conspiracies, or modern neo-gnostic exegesis, please, thank you. PLEASE.

(Note this in no way excludes Earl Doherty, Ted Hoffman, or any of their allies from commenting here. In fact, I would most welcome their participation.)

It will help if you are at least familiar with the idea of the midrashic and literary construction of GMk (as illustrated, for example, by Vorkosigan’s Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark). The more familiar you are with this thesis, or with Vork’s Commentary, the better.

(Note also that while Robert Eisler's The Messiah Jesus is a goldmine of information about alternate manuscript traditions of the New Testament and its associated apocrypha and pseudepigraphia, I consider Eisler's theories about the history of early Christianity to be wildly implausible and in no way wish my own proposals to be associated with his.)

Here are the claims of my thesis:

1) Crossan is right about the Cross Gospel
2) (Most of) the Christological insertions (which includes the Slavonic Testimonium, or the Slavonic version of the Testimonium Flavianum) in the Slavonic Josephus are a record of the Cross Gospel
3) The Cross Gospel, though itself containing midrash, preserves a pre-midrashic layer of narrative about the narrative character who would one day become known as "Jesus"

I think there is a fourth claim, though this is more controversial:

4) The best explanation for this pre-midrashic layer of narrative is: history.

The simplest and briefest explanation is as follows:

Read Crossan's work on the Cross Gospel (primarily contained in Four Gnostic Gospels and The Cross That Spoke) to see what it is and why it probably existed. It is an efficient thesis which links and explains numerous otherwise ad hoc features of the four gospels, plus the Gospel of Peter. (Not only that, it even links them to the Ascension of Isaiah, so it has a lot of explanatory power and scope.)

The best part of it is, it *also* links them to the Christological insertions in the Slavonic Josephus. (Look up Leeming and Leeming's edition online on Google Books for this material. Warning: you have a lot of reading in store for you.)

The existence of the Slavonic Josephus is inexplicable without the existence of the Cross Gospel. (There is a lot more to say about the Slavonic Josephus, but I'll leave it out for now.)

If this is correct, then although it did contain midrashic elements, the Cross Gospel seems to have also contained non-midrashic elements. Why? Because in the Slavonic Testimonium, the figure described there (whom we may a "Jesus-figure", even though he is unnamed in one of the manuscript traditions) is offered a revolutionary kingship, but turns it down:

Not only is this non-canonical, but I am not aware of any Midrashic tradition behind such an action, and cannot find any appropriate sources for this event in Vork's Commentary on Mark. However, I would be happy to be enlightened, if there is such a source, so if you know of one, please try to explicate it here.

I can sort of imagine that the author of the Cross Gospel (or of some proto-Cross Gospel predecessor) may have been interested in deliberately portraying the Jesus-figure (whom we will refer to as simply the "wonder-worker") as a non-militaristic Suffering Servant, in line with Pauline Christology. But then, if this portrayal is entirely theological, why does Pilate appear to make some sort of military assault on the wonder-worker and his followers?

That's non-canonical too! Nor can it be derived from any other source that Vorkosigan has used in his Commentary (such as Josephus' Vita*). To me, this strongly suggests that it is a non-literary event, i.e. we are finally peering into what may be a very distorted and almost non-recoverable historical layer at the bottom of the gospel traditions.

*(Indeed, if you think, as I do, that auMk—i.e. the author of Mark—created the character of Barabbas directly from the Vita and from Philo, then the events described in the Slavonic Testimonium—and hence in the Cross Gospel or in its predecessor—must be entirely independent of any literary influence from Josephus' Vita. Why? Because the Slavonic Testimonium betrays no awareness of the Barabbas tradition! Indeed, it seems obvious that auMk rewrote the Cross Gospel in order to create the trial of Jesus, in which a Jesus-figure is simultaneously condemned—as Jesus the Nazarene/Christ—and released—as Jesus Barabbas! Matthew preserves a ghost of this rewrite in the alternate manuscript traditions which retain the name "Jesus Barabbas" in place of the simple name "Barabbas"—showing that in the original Markan source that auMatt used, the name was Jesus Barabbas—neither Matthew nor any of his copiers had any reason to substitute the name "Jesus" before "Barabbas", therefore it must be a relic of the original text. I can try to explain this in more detail if need be. The point is that the gospel preserved in GPet and the Slavonic Josephus betrays a more primitive tradition than that of Mark—who has rewritten the narrative in a sophisticated,literary, and concise manner, perhaps to streamline an embarrassing text, or perhaps simply to illustrate his own political and theological arguments, to wit: that salvation is to be found in Jesus the Nazarene/Christ, and not in the revolutionary movements of the era. Indeed, he is making the point that it was allegiance to the revolutionary movements that brought the Fall of Jerusalem.

Note also that if I am right, it suggests a reason why the interpolator of the Slavonic Josephus—i.e. the individual who interpolated the original Greek version—chose to interpolate the War and not the Antiquities—because, Antiquities hadn't been written yet! The Vita having served as an appendix to the second edition of Antiquities…and if that is correct, then it also dates the version of the Cross Gospel that the interpolator was using—it dates to roughly the 80's of the Common Era, i.e. after the publication of War, but prior to the publication of Antiquities.)


Well, there it is in outline...I'd be happy to try and answer any questions.

Ben C Smith

I have some of these passages on my site.

I would like to see you flesh this out more on this thread. It has been a loooonnnng time since I read The Cross That Spoke.

It reminds me of John 6.15:

So Jesus, perceiving that they were going to come and take him by force to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself alone.

Could it be a meditation on what happened to most of the other kingly figures who opposed Roman rule in Josephus? (I mean Theudas, the Samaritan, the Egyptian, and so forth.)

Overall, very interesting. Thanks for posting.

Ben.

Roger Pearse

As I understand it, all of this on the Slavonic Josephus is mistaken and derives from material printed before the text was properly available to scholars.

The Slavonic Josephus is a medieval composition called the Three Captures of Jerusalem, where the author used a version of the Jewish War as the basis for the third part, but also included material from the bible, Antiquities, John Malalas; in other words, from whatever historical sources were available to him.

All the interesting theories about an Aramaic basis are just a mare's nest.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

the_cave

On the contrary, Leeming and Leeming's edition that I refered to was published in 2003.

And the Leeming edition filters out all the other sources (and whether or not Antiquities is the source for the Slavonic--actually Old Russian--TF is just what is at stake)

I didn't say anything about Aramaic--and read again where I explicitly distance myself from Eisler.

Pataphysician

How is this non-canonical?

During the first entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the gospels, the populace clearly great Jesus as the Messiah. Obviously greeting him as a Messiah means they want him to be King, which would require him to attack the Romans and Pilate.

Mark 11

Psalm 118 is a psalm about deliverance from oppressors, specifically foreign nations oppressing them, so I think the connotation is clear. John and Luke make this even more explicit as they have "blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel" and "blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord" respectively.

the_cave

Sure, I'd be happy to try and make my case in more detail when I get the chance.

And in my opinion that's exactly what it should remind you of! But Pataphysician's comment is interesting.

Possibly, but even the Slavonic version of the TF falls prior to those events, and I don't find it likely that the scribe is looking ahead to those events as he writes--and the Samaritan is not mentioned in War. Now if Roger Pearse is right and the author is just cribbing from Antiquities, that might explain it. However, why would the author write such an explicitly non-canonical account? Pilate makes no such large-scale assault in any of the canonical gospels.

the_cave

I like this a lot--I'll have to look at it in more detail.

And that is interesting, too--as Crossan argues that John and Luke (and Matthew) are drawing directly from the Cross Gospel, along with their other sources (though he says the same thing about Matthew).

Also interesting, in light of Ben's comment, is that in Jn 12:27 Jesus wonders whether he should ask to be delivered from "this time", immediately after John's version of the triumphal entry (which, in John, doesn't actually contain an entry).

Roger Pearse

The idea that the Slavonic Josephus contains material independent of the Greek Josephus does not come from Leeming and Leeming. They contradict this, after all. The Mescherskii preface makes that clear. All this stuff that the Slavonic Josephus has some independent information comes from people writing before that book was published.

"Filters out"? I'm not sure that I understand you, because the book indicates the sources, and gives an English translation of the Slavonic text in parallel with the H. St. John Thackeray translation of the Greek.

The ideas that the Slavonic Josephus has some independent value from that of the Greek Josephus tend to rely on the idea that it preserves content from the Aramaic first edition of the Wars. If you don't believe this, you need to account as to how the material in the Old Slavonic text gets there, given that it is derived from the Greek text.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

the_cave

They do, but then their own claims are also contradictory--on the one hand they argue that the insertions in general were made at the time of transcription (around 1100 or so IIRC) and for many they are probably right, but on the other hand for individual passages, they concede that they are uncertain.

And, that doesn't necessarily make it wrong. It just means if it's right, it has nothing to do with an Aramaic Josephus.

The text in the Leeming/Mescherskii edition does not include any of Malalas, save for references in the critical notes.

Agreed--and I think this is wrong.

I think it was inserted (in Greek) into a Greek abridgement of Greek Josephus. I don't know when this was done, but I suspect it was done fairly early. For one thing, some of it ends up in canonical Acts...(and that will probably take some explaining on my part, too...)

If it was all just translated from Antiquities into Old Russian when the OR (i.e. Slavonic) Josephus was written down, then why did the (presumably orthodox) scribe doctor the account with so many odd, non-canonical details?

Roger Pearse

The reason, as I understand it, is that he wasn't doing a translation of Josephus. He was writing his own book, on the Three Captures of Jerusalem, and using Josephus as one of his sources for part of it, and so part of his work is like a (doctored) translation of Josephus.

This is where Meshchersky's review of the manuscripts helps us. Earlier researchers tended to think of the text as a translation of Josephus. But once we have all the manuscripts, we see in fact a medieval Russian history book, and some manuscripts only contain the third portion (so M.)

I don't have Leeming & Leeming before me, but my memory is of references in the footnotes that this or that comes from Malalas. I have no way to verify this, tho.

All the best,

Roger Pearse