Ben C Smith

There is no other hand.

Ben.

aa5874

I wonder. Could it be Tacitus' Christus that was in the original? Just a thought.

sschlichter

Does Mason talk about that Arabic version found in the (70's?). Ie. Is it expected to be less tampered with or just re-tampered with?

jules?

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I understand that most Greek/Latin works were collected and translated after the 6th century and at the height in the 9th. therefore if widespread corrections were made in the 4th it is unlikely the Arab version was not tampered with.

2-J

Thanks for the summary Toto, I hadn't read this when I posted about the TF elsewhere earlier. Steve Mason seems to be talking a lot of sense.

vid

Also note opinion that entire Testimonium is forgery by Eusebius, as he is first one to report it, and it fits well with some specific aspects of his theology. Currently presented mainly by Ken Olson:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/4869

He wrote more material (continued discussion, commentaries on two later version with bit different wording, etc..., but i can't find them anymore. I found some claim that Ken withdraw his stuff from net, in reaction to his article: http://www.christiancadre.org/member..._josephus.html

EDIT: found it: http://kaimoi.blogspot.com/2005/03/k...-et-al_31.html

andrewcriddle

The Arabic version is generally accepted to be dependent on an earlier Syriac source (which is itself ultimately based on the Greek). IE the question is not when material from Josephus became available in Arabic (which I agree was late) but when it became available in Syriac (which may have been much earlier.)

(There is the obvious problem that the Arabic seems to be a free translation or paraphrase of the original Syriac and we don't know how much of the unusual readings were introduced in the process of translation from Syriac to Arabic.)

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Thanks for your summary Toto.

I've got both the editions. On a cursory reading the only changes in this section (from Finally the existence... to the end of the TF discussion ) between 1st and 2nd editions are of a minor stylistic nature.

Eg in the 1st edition Mason mentions A recent journal article by John P Meier in the 2nd edition we have An article by John P Meier.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Mason does discuss the Arabic version in some detail, although in a finally non-committal way Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Isn't book 6 of the Jewish War extant in Syriac anyway? Or does my memory mislead me?

Later: A Syriac translation of book vi. of the "Jewish War" is contained in the Peshitta manuscript of the Ambrosianus in Milan, in which it is called "The Fifth Book of Maccabees." The beginning of it was published by Ceriani in 1871; the complete text—a photographic reproduction of the manuscript—was issued by him at Milan in 1876-83, and was republished with German translation by H. Kottek, Berlin, 1886 (see R. Gottheil in "Hebraica," iii. 3, 136, New Haven, 1887).

Some notes on Agapius based on Georg Graf, Geschichte der arabischen christlichen Literatur vol. 2 pp.39-40:

Agapius son of Constantine (arabised as Mahbub ibn Qustantin) was the Melkite bishop of Mabbug (Hierapolis). He is one of the earliest Arabic Christian writers, and his history (Kitab al-'Unwan="Book of headings") dates from 941-2 AD. He was contemporary with the annalist Eutychius (=Said al-Bitriq), also a Melchite. His history commences with the foundation of the world and runs up to his own times. The portion dealing with the Arabic period is extant only in a single manuscript and breaks off in the second year of the Caliphate of Mahdi (160AH = 776-7 AD).

For the early history of Christianity, Agapius made use uncritically of apocryphal and legendary materials. For the following secular and ecclesiastical history, he relied on Syriac sources, in particular the World Chronicle of the Maronite Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785) for the end of the Ummayad period and the beginning of the Abbasids. He made use of Eusebius' Church history only through an intermediary compilation of short extracts. This he supplements from other sources. He gives an otherwise unknown fragment of Papias; and a list of Eastern Metropolitans. He uses the lost History of Bardaisan. But many of his sources must remain unknown.

His text was published in the Patrologia Orientalis in 4 portions, each of 200 pages, with a French translation; also in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium from Beirut mss, which I think has a Latin translation.

All the best,

Roger Pearse