Solo

Well, just before we get too generalized here, it is my belief that TF has long been recognized as having been interpolated. Already Voltaire ridiculed the intellectual naivete that would have Josephus testify to the Christian Messiah. So, the issue here - if that is an issue, since the accepted rules of evidence obligate us to discard evidence which we know has been compromised - is not whether Josephus was tampered with, but how much.

Roger, please be reasonable: no amount of rhetoric will make "if it be lawful to call him a man" authentic Josephus. Can we agree on that ? If we can, then at minimum, it is just as probable that the Lukan semitic "source" was used by an interpolator faking Josephus' testimony, perhaps the same one who rubber-stamped Matthew's honorific ο λεγομενος χριστος(1:16) into The Antiquities thinking it would come out echt Jewish.

That's fine but redundant. People will form their own opinion.

Regards,
Jiri

Malachi151

I wrote this on the CFI messgae board as part of a thread, but I think I'll post it here too.

I think that you are placing may too much emphasis on the summary of one person, you're not even looking at the facts, you're simply saying that this person claims that the consensus is that most people say its partly authentic, so that's good enough for you.

Have you read the rest of what Alice Whately wrote on that:

So, she also think that the concuses is a product of disillusionament with skepticism. Yikes, that's hardly a concensus I'd like to put weight on.

We all know that in the past 30 years, as has been reported by several studies, post-modernist and theological minded professors have increased in number in universities in history and philosophy and religious studies departments.

Quantity does not make quality.

Many of the arguments from these people make no sense or don't take the proper facts into account. For example:

http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/Josephus_on_Jesus

One of the arguments in favor of some form of authenticity is that it has also been recorded in a 10th century Arabic text that roughly quoted the passage.

The problem with this, however, is that the dominant skeptical view is that the passage was introduced in the 3rd or 4th century, so the fact that it is seen in a 10th century texts doesn't refute this view.

In addition, look at what is written in the 10th century Arabic quote:

This part of the quote greatly undermines the whole thing.

None of the other so-called evidence for Jesus make these theological claims, for example the quote from Tacitus. All that Tacitus says is that Christians are followers of Chrestus, who was killed by Pilate.

That is at least reasonable.

This quote says:

"They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders."

Our choice here is either to accept this as history, that this REALLY HAPPENED, and that Josephus is REPORTING ON HISTORY, or to reject this as history which means that this was not written based on real world knowledge and observation.

Now we get to the issue, which damns the passage either way IMO, either Josephus wrote:

"for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him"

In which case Josephus is making shit up because we can assume that this didn't happen, which would undermine his entire "testimony", because it would then indicate that his "testimony" was based on the same nonsense of Christian claims, after all this was supposedly written in the 90s, after the gospels.

OR

This was added later.

Then we have to look at the whole passage:

Which parts are theological?

Okay, so those bits can't be history, they are theology. Either they were later introducted to the remaing bits, or the whole thing (which flows together) was added later, or Josephus was writing Christian theology.

So, let's take those bits out.

Do we have a reason to believe that this was there before, and was later added to? No, not really, because everything that quotes this passeage quotes the other bits. In addition, the fact that Origen DIDN'T quote this still stands out, since even this passage would have been highly prized by him, given what he did quote from Jospehus.

Furthermore, the claim that "he drew many of the Jews and Gentiles" is refuted by other history, depending on how one defines "many". We certainly have no evidence that "many" people were drawn", it is not supported by anything else.

All of the other evidence woud indicate that, at best, he was a hardly known person with a small following.

Then we have the other passages that give trouble.

"a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure."

But Josephus was a conservative Jew, whose writings condemned false prophets, so it's doubtful that he would have written that Jesus was teaching the truth, since Josephus confirms in his other writings that he viewed the truth as the traditional Jewish theology of the time, so this line is too suspect and must also be cast out.

Now we have this line:

"And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross"

Again, very unlikely that Josephus would have put this line in, blaming the Jewish community for killing Jesus, which was, itself a theological line among the Christians, since indeed Josephus, again, was a conservative Jew.

Now this line:

"And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

This just seems bizarre, because "Christians" is a term that comes from the Greek "Christos", meaning savior or annointed one, whereas Messiah would have been the Jewish term, and the Gospels don't mention the word Christian, and Paul wrote that the term Christian was first used some time later in Greece starting at some place of instruction there, whether that is true or not.

Indeed many scholars have put forward that "Christians" was a label that was put on the followers of this sect by opponents of the sect, just like capitalists were labeled as such by Karl Marx, etc.

So, this whole bit seems unlikely at best, and wouldn't be real hhistory anyway, since there is nothing, other than this passage, to indicate that the term Christians was ever used during the supposed life of Jesus or by the supposed Jesus, and its a Greek term anyway.

So, I move to strike this passage as well.

Here is what we are left with:

The probolem with this passage is that NO ONE quotes this passage!

The big problem here is that the only quotes of the Josephus passage are of the FULLY FORMED ONE.

You see, those that try to claim that is has been interpolated have nothing to go on, they have no evidence of interpolation.

The evidence we have is this:

1) Origen quotes from Josephus, but does not include this passage in the 3rd century (or is it second, I forget).

2) This passage exists in a 9th century copy of Josephus.

3) This passage is roughly quoted, in full (minus the Christian part), in a 10th century copy in Arabic.

4) There are other quotes of the full passage in other texts that were all written after the 3rd/4th century.

Nowhere, do we have evidence of interpolation, i.e. nowhere do we have a quote that excludes parts of this passage, revealing a smaller and more acceptable passage minus the theology.

The passage is either there or not in the evidence, with only minor verb variances, etc.

So, the evidence, to me, indicates that this entire passage was introduced whole at some point. The fact that Origen didn't quote it is a major factor supporting the view that Josephus didn't write it. The theological points are another.

However, even if Josephus did write it (which I don't think he did), the value of it as evidence for the existance of a real Jesus is actually undermined by its theological points!

The fact that it says "for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him" completely undercuts this as objective history and reveals it as, at best, someone recording beliefs. We aren't interested in beliefs, we are interested in facts.

This was written around 90, so we do already know that the Jesus story was out and about by that point. The theological claims made in the Jospehus quote, even if they were written by Josephus, indicate this this isn't a separate objective witness to the life of this person. This quote is, AT BEST, a witness to the story of Jesus, which doesn't tell us anything other than, AT BEST, Josephus knew the story of Jesus, because we already have Paul writing about Jesus some time in the 50s, so we already know this story.

Roger Pearse

I don't want to get into a discussion of the TF here; I would only add that this view is held less today than at any point in the last 5 centuries.

But the general point is not that texts cannot be interpolated, but that we must have something better than the sort of presumptive arguments that "Josephus cannot testify to a Christian messiah". He quite certainly could have done; I do not believe that he did; I dislike intensely presumptive arguments because they involve too much 'logic' and too little data.

I sense that the general points that I was making have been treated as if written as special pleading for the TF. This is an error.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Amaleq13

To be entirely clear, are you saying here that fewer scholars today doubt that Josephus would identify Jesus as "Messiah" than in the last 5 centuries?

Malachi151

Moderator, please merge this with the Josephus sources thread, that was my mistake.