Originally Posted by Toto

You miss my point. If Josephus wrote about a James the brother of Jesus called Christ in the context of Jerusalem in 63 CE, why would you think that this Jesus was the same Jesus who was crucified in 30 CE? What would Josephus have meant by Christ, given that he was not a Christian?

Originally Posted by avi

Origen ???

Are you certain of that?

Can you please provide a link to Origen's Greek manuscript?? Oh, I see. Ok, well then, how about a link to the translation in Latin. Oh. Well, then, how about a link to Tertullian.....

****

The claims that James was called "the Just", derive from Clement of Alexandria, (according to Eusebius), Hegesippus (according to Eusebius and Jerome), and two tracts by unidentified authors, cited by Jerome:

Gospel according to the Hebrews--main canon of the Ebionists and Nazarenes;

Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi)--aka "fiction of Heretics" according to Eusebius;

Originally Posted by avi

Hey Abe, you want to try your big dog trick with me? I am thoroughly unconvinced, though I will grant Chaucer plus one for excellent writing.

Why doesn't Origen cite TF? Who was the guy complaining about massive interpolation, in the third century? Was that Origen???

Chaucer is hanging his "reality check" on Josephus. I hope someone can explain to me how a Jewish priest, leader of an insurrection against the Romans, could somehow compose any text sympathetic to a group of traitors to his beloved Judaism.... I simply find it much easier to attribute the supposed references to "Jesus the Christ" to Christian manipulation decades after the fact....

avi

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

[When Origen references a specific writing of Josephus and in that context uses some (not all) of the same specific phrasings as Josephus, then it counts as a quote.

Originally Posted by avi

Elaborating on Toto's point, James was a JEWISH RABBI, ultraconservative, who NEVER washed, wore only linen, never cut his hair, never drank etoh, and never ate animal flesh.

Does that sound, Abe, like someone who would be likely to praise the itinerant heretic Jesus of Capernaum, who, in defiance of Jewish law, claimed to have been the long awaited Messiah, a man sent to conquer the Romans, but who was executed like a common criminal?

Originally Posted by avi

How did Mary's family come to include a Jewish rabbi as leader in the innermost sanctum of the Temple?

avi

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Translation.

Origen never references a specific writing of Josephus and quotes Matthew 1:16 , but never claims to be quoting Josephus ,just paraphrasing.

Originally Posted by Chaucer

Josephus was a 25-26 year old aristocratic Jew, quite unsympathetic toward Christians, and a member of the dominant priestly elite. In 63 AD he had just returned from a successful diplomatic mission to Rome and was taking his first steps in political life when the most significant political event of his young life took place - the High Priest was deposed. And he tells us in his Antiquities, chapter XX, that the thing that triggered this momentous upheaval in the small world of his caste was the execution of an older contemporary of his: James "brother of that Jesus nicknamed Messiah".

So Josephus is not talking about some vague rumour of someone that he's merely heard about. He's describing a set of events which would have been momentous and which he witnessed when he was a young man. And the person James whose execution triggered them was not some vague figure that Josephus merely thought existed. James was a contemporary of the young Josephus who lived in the same fairly small city of 50-80,000 people. And Josephus matter-of-factly informs us that this James had a brother called Jesus "nicknamed Messiah". Josephus mentions this in a way that indicates this Jesus was more famous than his brother James (Josephus identifies others by reference to more famous brothers elsewhere).

So Josephus didn't just think James and Jesus were historical people - he was in a position to know this. In fact, as ancient sources go, this is about as close to first-hand testimony as it gets.

The three references and quotes of Josephus's phrase in Origen also show that "nicknamed Messiah" is not an interpolation. That's why scholars (as opposed to bumbling amateur bloggers and self-published hobbyists) all accept that it's genuine.

And it refers to Jesus.

The three references to this passage, with direct word-for-word quotation of the key phrase, are in Origen Contra Celsum I.4, Contra Celsum II:13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei X.17. In each case he directly quotes the phrase used in Josephus: "αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου" ("the brother of that Jesus nicknamed Messiah"). It takes some seriously contrived hoop-jump to explain away these three clear references to the passage, with the phrase in question directly quoted, in writings which are more than half a century before Christians were in any position to be interpolating anything at all.

Now personally, after having done a fair amount of reading up on the latest professional scholarship myself, I don't credit the notion that Jesus was somehow God herself, nor that Jesus restored the stone-dead to life, nor that he changed water to wine, etc., etc. But we do have a distinctly consistent body of texts among the non-Biblicals, like Josephus's Antiquities XX, like Tacitus, like Pliny, like Suetonius, etc., none of which come from believers, and each of which gives us a consistent picture of a strictly normal human being only, a relatively obscure genuinely historic and strictly human figure who did nothing supernatural at all and who was nailed by the Romans for stirring up trouble.

That is the Jesus whom the documentary evidence points to as the most plausible. And that is the Jesus -- the strictly human Jesus -- whom the widely atheist/skeptic sector of the secular professional academic scholarly community of today takes to be the most likely individual, entirely historical, to have stirred up trouble and been executed during the reign of Tiberius.

Anyone here who carelessly-on-purpose conflates this consensus among academic largely skeptic professional scholars for

A) a strictly human Jesus, based on a consistent body of secular evidence of a strictly human Jesus in the pagan chronicles and letters,

with

B) the hybrid magic man believed in by fundies reading Scripture only

is being totally dishonest.

Got that?

Again, Origen cites Josephus's entirely autobiographical Antiquities XX reference to James no fewer than three times. Origen refers to Josephus's autobiographical account of James in Origen's Contra Celsum I.4, Contra Celsum II:13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei X.17.

Furthermore, these pre-Constantine references of Origen's to Josephus's Antiquities XX put Josephus's autobiographical Antiquities XX account of James in a totally different class from the questionable Antiquities XVIII, with Josephus's third-hand account of Jesus only, with its textual variants from "He was the Messiah" in an 11th-century ms. to no such claim and a strikingly noncommittal tone in a 10th-century Syriac version of the same Antiq. XVIII passage. Not to mention the fact that the earliest outside reference to Antiq. XVIII is found in Eusebius from a time after Christianity was no longer underground.

Contrast that with the straightforward textual history for the autobiographical account of James in Josephus's Antiquities XX: no textual variants for any version of that passage at all, and the earliest outside references -- three separate ones! -- from Origen, when Christianity was still underground. So don't confound these two Josephus passages. It only wastes our time. Once again, Josephus moved in the same circles that witnessed Ananus's execution of James in the early 60s c.e. It was a big part of Jos's young adulthood in Palestine. He was a witness to James's execution, and he knew who James was. Jos's early eyewitness description of James in Antiq. XX is duly confirmed in three separate places in Origen well before Christianity was anything but a powerless minority sect.

Chaucer

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

When someone tells tall tales and passes it off as the truth that is fraud and deception constructed in order to gain power.

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

That there was no such person as a biblical Jesus is a certainty since none of the miracles attributed to him happened. When someone tells tall tales and passes it off as the truth that is fraud and deception constructed in order to gain power.

That there may have been a human being, as opposed to an alleged man-god, making anti-social and unsubstantiated claims, so what? There is virtually no evidence to support the existence of such a person..

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

That there was no such person as a biblical Jesus is a certainty since none of the miracles attributed to him happened. When someone tells tall tales and passes it off as the truth that is fraud and deception constructed in order to gain power.

That there may have been a human being, as opposed to an alleged man-god, making anti-social and unsubstantiated claims, so what? There is virtually no evidence to support the existence of such a person.

Originally Posted by Steve Weiss

People in the era of an alleged Jesus were ignorant and superstititious, and there were many competing mythologies, Christianity being the survivor since it gained official sponsorship of the Roman state. Theocracy served the interests of church and state, and dissent was hazardous to one's health. It suited the powers that be to adopt the Jesus myth and enforce conformity to it; the truth be damned. It wasn't theology that triumphed but politics.

Originally Posted by Chaucer

That's blatantly begging the question: In the very OP you quote here, there is explicit reference made to the consistently normal human status of Jesus the preacher in Antiq. XX, in Pliny, Surtonius, Tacitus, etc. This is a consistent body of evidence throughout a number of pagan sources that sticks to a strictly human preacher who got nailed.