rlogan

There is a tedium in re-plowing ground. Note he keeps asking, as he did at the outset, for people to refer to IIDB archives.

Below is an example -


This is one of the things we have discussed here at length (the phony persecution under Nero) , and I am not discouraging it in the least, and nor has spin who has participated in all of the more significant discussions. He has loaned us his imposing linguistic skills on all of these matters.

Forgery, or interpolation, or false accreditation, or whatever "nice" names you want to apply to them is rampant not only throughout the Bible itself - but extends to incredible frauds like the Donation of Constantine and to brutal repression of dissent and destruction of documents.

I happily admit that when we are looking at any particular piece of evidence that this weighs heavily in my mind.

There is not one single piece of bedrock upon which you can begin to erect a case for even the existence of a historical Jesus bearing some relation to the Gospel renditions.

Every shred of it requires hefty benefit-of-the-doubt and explaining away of big problems.

The true believer in a historical Jesus maybe cribs together a hypothetical TF original with a James passage, an embrace of the mythical Neronian persecution, a dating of gospels to one minute after the temple destruction, (since that is the earliest you can put them), a swallowing of the Ignatia like a catfish on chicken liver, and perhaps Kata Sarka is as good as archaeological evidence of Jesus' thigh bone...etc.

It is one big circular affair with each suspect piece being necessary to mutually reinforce the others. So when the HJ adherent looks at Tacitus for the Neronian persecution, it is already getting the benefit of the doubt despite the oddities (eg use of procurator vs prefect).

And so it comes down to a model or working premise for the whole thing. A TF "original" promoter is someone who already has a premise for the historical Jesus. I have come to a conclusion there was none based on the totality of information I have looked at and so there is no TF "original" for me.


Instead, Jesus is a necessity for consolidation of power over various 2d cent. Christ cults, and the Jesus story is retrojected onto the past amidst plenty of other fake "letters" designed for liturgical use and self-serving ends.

The forging of Josephus becomes a critical foundation stone in the first official Church History penned by the shameless con man Eusebius. His "Church History" is rife with bogus crap like the slaughter of the innocents, the Magi in the birth narrative and all manner of ridiculous things.

So it fits nicely in my "trajectory" of origination where it first appears - in Eusebius the liar's apologetic church history.

Rather than writing a whole dissertation on how each item is viewed in the context of the whole, maybe we sometimes are a bit terse and say "see the archives"

Ben C Smith

Origen and our extant copies of Josephus share a phrase word for word in the same context, no other author known to us uses that phrase, Origen claims to be describing what Josephus had written earlier, you wish to make the phrase in Josephus later than the phrase in Origen, and yet the trajectory of copying between the two is not your problem?

At the risk of missing your real reconstruction of the scenario (because you have not offered one), here is my take on the trajectory.

1. Origen claims to be quoting Josephus. He correctly states that Josephus discusses John the baptist in book 18. He correctly states that Josephus seeks the causes of the war with Rome. He correctly states that Josephus does not accept Jesus as the Christ (presuming, of course, that the Testimonium as it stands is not original). He incorrectly states that Josephus assigns the cause of the war to the death of James. He correctly implies by that last statement that Josephus discusses the death of James somewhere.

2. Origen makes this last (incorrect) claim twice in our extant texts, both times implying that Josephus discusses the death of James. Both times he also uses the same turn of phrase to describe James, brother of Jesus called Christ. This is not his usual way of describing either James or Jesus.

3. All our extant texts of Josephus happen to have that same phrase in the discussion of the stoning of James. This cannot be a coincidence. Either (A) Origen knew Josephus or (B) a Josephan interpolator knew Origen. (Other options, including that an Origenic interpolator knew an interpolation in Josephus or that both were copying from another text, now lost, would require much specific argumentation on your part.)

4. Option A explains why Origen and Josephus share this phrase (because that is what Josephus wrote, at least according to the copy that Origen possessed), why he would do so twice (because his text of Josephus had not changed since the first time round), and why Origen uses this phrase only in the context of the death of James (because that is the context in which he found the phrase in his text of Josephus). Option A does not explain why Origen thought Josephus had blamed the fall of the holy city on the death of James.

5. Option B explains why Origen and Josephus share this phrase (because the Josephan interpolator found it in his text of Origen). Option B does not explain why Origen would use the phrase twice in this same context, nor why Origen uses this phrase only in conjunction with the death of James, nor why Origen thought Josephus had blamed the fall of the holy city on the death of James.

Option A has greater explanatory power than option B. I would add that option A is also the prima facie alternative. I suggest that it looks like Origen copied a line from Josephus because he probably did.

Ben.

Julian

Just a quick note here, an alternate scenario, if you will.

Suppose Josephus didn't contain the phrase but that Origen added it, remembering that James was the brother of the lord from Galatians. Origen used the phrasing from Matthew.

Suppose a christian scribe, making a copy of Josephus, knowing Contra Celsum and wanting to clarify to his readers who this James was and used Origen's, presumably well-known, reference.

Suppose all our, and Eusebius' et al., copies of Josephus comes from a single exemplar, or a single exemplar that was distributed in christian circles.

Julian

P.S. And remember, that we clean the flyspecks off the bread and eat it because, disgusting as it is, we would starve otherwise.

Ben C Smith

[What follows is my mention of Carlson and his hypothesis on Tacitus and Josephus.]

The hypothesis in question never even mentions the Neronian persecution except in the most oblique manner. It assumes that Tacitus wrote the passage attributed to him because said passage appears in the extant manuscripts. If you wish to argue that the passage is a forgery, that is dandy, but surely those who reject that hypothesis (as I believe Carlson does, and I certainly do) are allowed to go on to discuss the implications of that passage at will.

You can always look away until we return to the matters that you deem more worthy of your time and attention.

You appear to agree with me that doing history is a lot like sifting through dung.

This appears to be drifting off into conclusions which should be the result of a vast and careful historical inquiry into early Christianity. You may be correct, but my post was not about the conclusions; it was about the methods used to arrive at those conclusions.

True believer? Suddenly it feels like we are moving into a different realm than the business of history.

Your conclusion is so noted; but the OP was about methods, not results.

The shameless con man Eusebius.

Sounds like a good place to pull out the rubber gloves and do history.

My OP had nothing to do with the terse command to see the archives. It had to do with historical method.

Thanks, rlogan.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

My option B above was that an interpolator who knew Origen wrote the phrase into Josephus. How does your scenario differ from that?

Ben.

Julian

I suppose that my version allows for A and B. Origen knew Josephus but added the phrase himself to the James reference. A scribe makes a copy of Josephus, without the phrase, remembers Origen and performs his service of enlightening his readers by a simple addition.

Julian

S.C.Carlson

For the record, I don't believe the Tacitus testimonium is a forgery or a later interpolation. I do think that it is dependent on Josephus, however, so it does not really add much to our knowledge of Jesus after all.

rlogan

Sorry I am not articulating this clearly, Ben.

I think most of us are in an iterative method in which we consume information and have some kind of global working hypothesis in mind while we are doing it.

Any new piece of information is incorporated by us according to our individual working hypothesis. Call it bias if you will, but I don't mean the term pejoritavely.

An "original" TF goes against my working model, and the absence of one goes against yours, I believe.

Given we agree on forgery, I throw it out to be consistent with the rest of my views on things, and you attempt an excavation of the "original" to be consistent with yours.

We're following exactly the same method and reach different conclusions on this question.

Any revision of belief on something as important as the TF causes a change in the working hypothesis and a cascading effect on all kinds of other things we may consequently have to reconsider.


Well, yes - I understand that.

Maybe I'm just not capable of conveying my point well enough. Spin does a lot more than just throw it out gratuitously. It is contingent on a lot of other data, discussed in the archives in great detail.

Ben C Smith

Ah, perhaps this is the heart of the matter.

No, neither an original Testimonium nor a totally forged Testimonium goes against my working model. I was in fact on the verge of tossing out the Testimonium in its entirety when I read that weblog by Carlson.

That is, to be clear, not why I attempt an excavation of an original Testimonium. When I was on the verge of throwing it out entirely, I was doing so because I thought the passage was inconsistent with the evidence from Josephus himself. When I was persuaded to perhaps keep a few lines of it, I was (and still am) doing so because I thought (and still think) it would make better sense of the Tacitean connection.

I find myself defending all sorts of positions that would be hard to put together into a convincing and coherent overall working model. Sometimes the data converge nicely and I get the opportunity to theorize beyond the texts; but that is not quite as common a happening as I would like.

Ben.

Amaleq13

I'm pretty sure you meant "Luke" rather than "Josephus" above but not sure enough to edit your post.