Malachi151

No, color you reading impaired. I was discussing both of those references separately. Both references are in Antiquities. My point is that the Testimonium is recognized by everyone as spurious, so when you exclude that, it would leave ONLY the reference to Jesus as the brother of James in the entirety of all Josephus' works. Does it make any sense that Josephus would recognize that there was a "Jesus Christ", and then not write anything else about him, aside from the one indirect reference, which he never explains? How are the Romans whom he is writing for supposed to know who "Jesus Christ" is? He never explains it, and never writes anything else about someone, who if recognizable by the title Christ, would surely be worth writing about since he shed much more ink on many more insignificant figures.

Doug Shaver

Behe's dreck has been refuted by qualified experts, who have identified his false assumptions and fallacious arguments.

Gooch's dad

Why even bother bringing the Testimonium up, then? You set up a straw man so you can rejoice in knocking it down, I guess? Good for you.

Josephus didn't call him Jesus Christ. So the rest of your post is irrelevant.

Malachi151

I was making the point that this would be Josephus' only reference to "Jesus Christ", and thus explaining that there are no other references and making it clear that the other purported reference is invalid to clarify the point that there are no other references.

Here is the quote in full:

To quote from wikipedia, not that that is a good source, but since the argument is already made:

To add to this argument, it would be VERY odd to mention that someone is the brother of someone the way that it is, if that person is irrelevant to the conversation. Mentioning that he is the brother of Jesus only makes sense if the Jesus being discussed is the son of Damneus, thus i makes a point, otherwise its just irrelevant information.

Now, in addition to this argument. If Josephus was aware of a Jesus "who was called Christ", then why didn't he ever write anything else about him? Would the fact that there was a Jesus "who was called Christ" be a hell of a lot more significant than dozens of other things and people that Josephus wrote about?

In all of his works this is the only reference he makes to him? That might be passable if he made the reference to him as Jesus, son of Joseph, meaning that he didn't know of anything special about him, but that he "was called Christ" would in and of itself merit more ink being split at least somewhere about him.

Gooch's dad

Yeah, yeah, I know the arguments already. The fact remains that this quote from Josephus is widely considered by historians to be genuine. I know you don't think it is. Why should I care?

It is a bare fact that this quote is in all copies of Josephus, and that it is generally considered to be genuine.

If you have such a solid case to make as to Jesus being a mythical figure, why not submit a paper to a journal of historical inquiry?

I find it quite odd that nobody has managed this feat. But it sure reminds me of the odd fact that creationists and ID'ers haven't managed to get peer-reviewed papers published in science journals.

Malachi151

Maybe I will some day, but as for now I don't have the credentials. There is a major bias against this position, as we all know, but the case is being made more and more solid by the year.

As for the quote, we have thee facts to consider:

1) The oldest copies of this text are from the 9th or 10th century, and many books are passed down from a single source somewhere along the line, so the fact that this is in "all the copies" doesn't exclude this from being an early interpolation.

2) This text could be 100% authentic, and Jesus called the Christ could be the son of Damneus. In fact this is not at all unlikely. Jesus was a common name and so was James. Many people proclaimed themselves to be the Messiah. And the fact that this person was called the Messiah it would make sense that they were given the priesthood.

Edit: Actually Messiah is the wrong term here, since Christ just means anointed one, which is different from Messiah. The term Christ could be used and was used to describe someone as pious, but not necessarily the Messiah.

3) If this quote is talking about Jesus Christ of the gospels, it is the one and only independent reference to him in all of ancient literature.

Adding a reference to an external "Jesus" in this paragraph makes no sense at all, especially the way that it is done, which would assume that this external Jesus is so well known that it is appropriate to identify a James via his brotherly association to him, which was never done back then and would only make sense if "Jesus Christ" was a highly well known person, and if he was such a well known person, then why didn't Josephus or anyone else write about him?

The external Jesus (Christ) is completely irrelevant to the conversation. If Jesus son of Damneus is called Christ, then that makes sense. In this case we are talking about a completely different person from the Jesus of the gospels.

Malachi151

Point of info here:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...y/priests.html

Lots of Jesus' in there...

Mythra

Nope. Not one.

But I haven't given sight to the blind. Healed paralytics. Raised the dead. Walked on water. Served a one-basket picnic to 5,000 people.

My fame has not been spread throughout all Judea. (or anywhere else)

So, to answer your statement, if something significant isn't written about me while I'm alive, it's safe to assume that I did nothing significant.

The Jesus of the gospels is a nice story. That is all.

Mythra

All you have to do is remove one simple scene from the gospel story, and we may have never even heard of this Jesus:

The simple act of Pilate washing his hands.

Amaleq13

That isn't entirely accurate. The written evidence indicates that many priests took up residence in "Nazareth" after the destruction of Jerusalem (c.70CE). That, alone, is a strong indicator that the town existed earlier in the century and was known by that name.

You can certainly disagree with their reinterpretation of the evidence but Doherty, Price, and Wells, for example, certainly directly address the mainstream views of the evidence.

Since scholars 100 years ago are known to be beyond error and no new relevant evidence could possibly have been discovered since then, I guess that settles it.

Most, if not all, mythicists are well aware that their position is not accepted by the vast majority of biblical scholars but pointing it out does not actually constitute an argument against that position.