gurugeorge

... and suppose that some kind of early Christianity did exist, but that the story we have about its origins is false. Perhaps it wasn't even called Christianity when it first started.

What else, in Josephus, could have been about a nascent cult that could have developed into the Christianity we know?

Take, for example, the other "Jesuses" in Josephus. What if Christianity actually developed from one of those? I mean, isn't the obvious approach to the HJ question to see what sort of human being in history could have been the human being behind what later became the Christ myth?

Or perhaps the cult had another name in its very earliest stages, and it's something he mentions in passing that you wouldn't think applied to Christianity? Perhaps some renegade rabbis or something?

IOW, look at it the other way round: look for a possible human candidate who is historically attested (an entity about whom there's no problem that he was a historical person), and see if any of those could have been the cult figure?

Has anybody done a study like this?

mountainman

Josephus and Epictitus following him speak of a group of lawless brigands and gangsters who inhabited the "bad-lands" of Judea during this epoch. The name of this group was selected by a number of later authors to refer to the christians. The author of the apocryphal "Acts of Peter and Andrew" appears to be the first to use the name "Galilaeans" to refer to the christian apostles in a most derogatory fashion ....

7 The chief men of the city heard of it
and sent for him and made him tell his story.

8 And the devil entered them and they said:

Alas! these are of the twelve Galilaeans
who go about separating men from their wives;
What are we to do?

The second of course is Emperor Julian who actually legislated that the name of the christians be formally changed throughout the Roman empire to the appelation of "Galilaeans".

Josephus and the Jewish connection to the new testament IMO is an utterly false lead, since the NT is directed at the greeks. Therefore I would suggest looking outside of Josephus for this historical cult figure of the first century, and you wont need to look too far to find Apollonius of Tyana, whose name appears as "Apollos" in Acts in the Codex Bezae, and who is the subject of a large political treatise by Eusebius. Robin Lane-Fox conjectures a relationship between the cult figure of Apollonius and the temple of Asclepius at Aegae, which was utterly destroyed by the army prior to Nicaea.

show_no_mercy

Why one? Why not all of them? If it were all of them, would there be a "historical" Jesus, or a "mythological" Jesus?

* Jesus son of Ananias was a homeless preacher who preached solely about the end times starting around the year 62 CE. While shouting continually "woe to Jerusalem" during the Passover feast in Herod's Temple, he was brought to the Procurator Albinus by the Jews who were worried that he was possessed by an evil spirit. This Jesus was whipped and punished in front of the procurator without saying a word other than "woe to Jerusalem" and said nothing else in his defense. Albinus, seeing that Jesus was simply out of his mind and not a threat to anyone, released him.

Jesus continued to preach "woe to Jerusalem" in the streets of Judea for the next 8 years until, during the war between Judea and Rome, he was killed by a seige weapon.

* Jesus son of Sapphias was a Jewish rebel during the first Jewish/Roman war (66 - 72 CE) who gathered a group of fishermen and poor people to mutiny against the Jewish general (and subsequent Jewish historian) Josephus. When one of Jesus' entourage decided to betray him, he was arrested and his group of fishermen and poor people abandoned him.

* (Assuming the reference in Anti. 20 is an interpolation) Jesus son of Damneus had a brother named James who was illegally executed by the Sanhedrin. When the High Priest of this Sanhedrin was fired for this transgression, Jesus was subsequently given the High Priesthood

So we have a Jesus that is handed over to the procurator and never says a word in his defense, a Jesus who is betrayed and his group of fishemen and poor people abandon him, and a Jesus who is given the high priesthood (i.e. is a "christ") due to an unlawful execution.

What if the Jesus presented in the narrative of Mark is simply a mish-mash of the different Jesuses in both Josephus and the Septuagint (Jesus the son of Fish, successor to Moses; Jesus the first high priest upon the rebuilding of the temple; Jesus who preaches wisdom - the author of the Wisdom of ben Sirach)? Would we count this as "the" historical Jesus? Does it even make sense to argue for a historical Jesus if this is true?

DCHindley

I don't think there was one. That has always been a problem for Christian apologists.

Every non-Christian writer who has been claimed to refer or allude to Jesus or Christians, can be taken as:

A) referring to someone else (the Jewish references from Talmud and midrash)or others that had a similar name (the "christians" who suffered semi-unjustly in Suetonius Life of Nero 16¹, or the Jews who rioted at the instigation of "Chrestus" in Life of Claudius 25², or Tacitus 15:24³).

or

B) reactions to Christian statements (Tacitus' explanation of who the Christians were who Nero had executed⁴).

or

C) Christian attempts to interject themselves into existing historical accounts (all the interpolation theories, and maybe even #4 above)

The only undeniable statement by a historical figure about Christ (the name "Jesus" is not mentioned) is by Pliny the Younger, who directly interrogated Christians, but he is really only repeating what they told hiim, including some who were examined under torture. Whatever Christianity was in his day, it had come a long way from revering a historical figure to revering a semi-divine one.

DCH

1) "Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition."

2) "Because the Jews at Rome caused constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [Christ], he [Claudius] expelled them from the city [Rome]."

3) "But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called 'Chrestians' by the populace."

4) "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular."

aa5874

Once the Jesus of the NT is rejected it can only be speculated how the character was derived.

I speculate that the Jesus story was derived from the writings of Josephus, Hebrew scripture, and traditional beliefs about the Supernatural.

andrewcriddle

It seems clear, even from a very conservative viewpoint that the movement that became Christianity was originally called something else.

However it seems at least highly likely that members of the movement that became Christianity were already known as Christians before Josephus wrote the Antiquities.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

That may be so, but my point was supposed to be that they may not necessarily be the only group to be so named. In other words, I think there is a good chance "christian" (small "c") may have been more or less a generic term for Jewish nationalists of various stripes. "Christ" would in this case mean an annointed representative, either a candidate for High Priest or a potential Regent. It seems presumptuous of Christians, or critics in general, to automatically think it can or should only refer to "Christians" (capital "C").

DCH

aa5874

It can hardly be true that Jesus believers were highly likely to be known as christians before the writings of Josephus when the word "christian" is part of the forgery known as the TF or Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3.

There is no other mention of "christians" in all the forty or so books of Josephus.

There is no mention of any DEIFIED Jew called Jesus, the King of the Jews, whom people believed could save them from sin, while the Jewish Temple was still standing, in any other writing.

And further, one needed not to believe in Jesus to be called a christian in the 1st century, you could believe in a magician and be called a christian during the days of the Emperor Claudius.

mountainman

If the TF is a forgery and if the story we have about the origins of christianity is false, then I would be seriously questioning the value and efficiency of any quest in relation to those false origins. However I would be especially interested in the political situation during the epoch in which we suspect that the forgery was enacted. What was the religious topography, the philosophical and literature topography, and the political history leading up to that specific epoch when the forgery was undertaken. These questions -- given the two ifs in your OP -- become IMO mandatory.

mountainman

Highly likely based on what specific evidence? Surely we can't wheel in the new testament? And surely if the TF was forged, Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius, Marcus Aurelius and others who appear to mention "Chrestians" must also be questioned as either suspected forgeries, or as being ambiguous as to the question of the "early chrestians". Each of these citations has been critically questioned in regard to their authenticity. I suggest that this "high likelihood" is firmly based upon the authority of the christian tradition which once (prior to the Age of Enlightenment) included the TF of Josephus.