Haran

I can't remember well at the moment, but isn't the phrase "the so-called Messiah"? I think there is a qualifying word before "christos" - "legomenos", or "so-called".

If "christos" truly would have offended anyone's sensibilities, then "so-called' probably would have tamed down this reaction...

Amos

The bible does not claim that Jesus existed but that Jesus was the name given to the child that was born unto Joseph the upright man who was from Judea because he was a Jew by faith. The distinction between Joseph the man and Joseph the Jew (from Judea) is made to distinguish the protagonist from the antagonist in the mind of Joseph and this indicates that out of the religion this child was born. We can say that a reversal took place in the mind of Joseph who was now looking for meaning in his own life and this search was initiated by faith now seeking understanding.

This mental search is what led Joseph to Betlehem where he was to give an "account of himself" and when he arrived in this state of abandonment the renewal of his mind took place. Bethlehem means something like "house of bread" and the journey to Bethlehem is the required state of mind before renewal can take place and is therefore "by no means the least among the princes of Judea [Judaism]" (Judaism is a beautiful religion). This means that Joseph was reborn and the child that was reborn is the "promised one" or "so called messiah" who was later called Christ to begin a new religion that was taken out of the old mythology.

So did Jesus exist? Yes, he was the reborn Joseph who was never real himself but was the ego identity of the person called Joseph who was a Jew. Joseph was also a carpenter by trade because carpenter are know to make many things and since all things are made in sin Joseph was a big sinner and therefore pregnant with despair wherefore he was led by Mary, who was the driving force in his subconscious mind, to initiated this personal inquiry out of which the child was born.

Jesus now becomes a new name for the old ego identity of Joseph and this was possible because the identity in which Joseph was created in the image of God as man (and thus wherein he was the firstborn) is now reborn in his own mind. From here the old image of Joseph the Jew must decrease and the reborn image of Joseph the man must increase. This takes place in the Gospels and the place this happens is the transitory state of mind Catholics call purgatory, which now means that the gospels take place in purgatory.

So now did Jesus really exist? Yes, but only in the myth because the identity of Joseph was always an illusion or else crucifixion and resurrection could not have been possible. In other words, Jesus was the ego consciousness of Joseph that was never real to begin with.

godfry n. glad

Haran did muse:

That depends...on how the readers interpreted the term.

Do you think that appending "so-called" to "military leader who shall either utterly destroy or drive out all goyim/kittim from the Promised Land and restore the temple and the land to the righteous of God" would soften the curiosity of the typical Roman reader? I personally think that if the Roman reader knew of the typical Jewish understanding of the word, they would want to know who this person was, who it was that called him that, and why. After all, here was someone who Josephus stated that others claimed he would defeat and subjugate the entire Roman empire; who would call this unknown that? Yet...that fuller understanding of the messianic concept, and how this particular individual relates to that concept, is totally lacking from Josephus' works.

Then, after searching my files, I dredged up this gem:

I keep coming back to the understanding that _AofJ_ was written for a Graecophonic Roman audience, most of whom would have no idea to what the term referred. What would they have thought of this "Christ," had the undefined term been included as it is in modern translations? Well, lacking as I am in proficiency with Koine Greek, I sought assistance from others in understanding how the term might have been understood by the gentile audiences that Paul and his competitors would have
addressed. Another poster in another forum (Dr. Christopher Forbes, who lectures in New Testament, Hellenistic history, and history of ideas at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, where he is also Vice President of the Society for the Study of Early Christianity) was kind enough to send me this:

So, unless one were a member of the small minority group of the far-flung Jewish communities of the 1st century Mediterranean, or the even smaller minority of the germinal Christian communities, the chances are that one might think that Josephus was referring
to "Jesus, called the ointment"....or "called the lineament."

I'd say that would distinctly call for an explanation, or at least a
definition of what a Jewish speaker meant by using the phrase. Yet, such seems to be entirely absent from _Antiquities of the Jews_ or any of Josephus' other works.

Of course, there's still the "Paulist" definition of the word, which, if we accept the usual dating of Paulistic corpus, would put a new definition to the "christos" term, reputedly a Grecification of the messianic term in Hebrew (which I'll just say was a reference to a transcendant soteriological martyr-figure), in the middle of the first century CE. The problem here is that this usage conflicts with the typical Jewish understanding of the messianic figure (i.e., "christos") as interpreted by Reb Akiba in relation to bar Kochba nearly a century _after_ the reputed time of the Pauline mission. If this is the case, and Paul and his contemporaries were forging new definitions of the term, then how can we readily accept that Josephus is using the Paulist meaning... though that's exactly what most modern interpretors seem to be asserting.

These understandings give me pause in readily interpreting the _AotJ_ 20.200 reference as authentic. I'd be open to someone explaining to me why I should accept it as authentic, particularly if they could explain this terminology conundrum.... But that has not yet been done to my satisfaction.

godfry n. glad

Bill

This thread prompted me to review what Earl Doherty wrote about Josephus. After reading through Doherty's interpretation once again, I've again decided that I'm not convinced that the original copies of Josephus (as they left his own hand) lacked any reference to Jesus whatsoever. I feel that the references were there, in some way that it is not now possible to reconstruct, but that would have at least attempted to make clear to his Roman audience just which Jesus and James were being referred to (we should never forget that Jesus, Joseph, and James were probably the three most common first names among first century Jewish men, so there would have necessarily have needed a fair amount of sorting out).

Along these veins, we ought to note the conclusion of what Doherty quotes from Antiquities 20: "... And the king, Agrippa, in consequence, deprived him of the high priesthood, which he had held three months, and appointed Jesus, the son of Damnaeus.” That is, of course, a reference to yet-another Jesus; this one being appointed High Priest after Ananus had James (and others) stoned to death.

I do think that the reference to "(the) Christ" in Antiquities 20 is a later redaction to the original text. What Josephus actually wrote is most likely forever lost to us. But it probably did in some way refer back to the same Jesus who was mentioned at greater length in Antiquities 18, where the much larger redaction occurs.

=====

I generally follow Eisenman's conclusion to James the Brother of Jesus where he writes, as his penultimate sentence, Who and whatever James was, so was Jesus.

Of course, Eisenman doesn't mean that Jesus and James were the same person! Only that, if one is purely mythical, then so too is the other. James is clearly NOT mythical, and so, therefore, Jesus must have been an historical personage.

But if, as Eisenman documents, the book of Acts was thoroughly redacted to largely eliminate much of the material about James, then it is easy to connect the dots and assert that the gospels themselves are far more likely to present a fictional picture of Jesus. And if it is true that the Gospel of Mark is actually a rewrite of Homer, as Richard Carrier seems to accept after reviewing Dennis R. MacDonald's book, then this too argues that the picture of Jesus in the entire New Testament is fictional, as Mark is supposed to be the earliest of the gospels to be committed to paper.

And again, a strong argument exists that at least the three synoptic gospels were later redacted to include favorite parts of each other in each of their texts. But that only adds to the evidence of the gospels as fictional accounts.

=====

So, we arrive back again at the question that has so excited scholars for the past few centuries: was Jesus an historical personage or not? In spite of the homeric epic theory and all of the redactions, the authentic letters of Paul and the few passages from Josephus lead me to believe that there really was a person who filled the role now named Jesus, the brother of James. Paul writes of the reverence that James holds for that person, and I can hardly doubt that the reverence of James was genuine. But it seems clear to me that it was more the reverence of the living for a long-dead relative than it was a reverence for a diety, as the Christians claim.

I think that, at the end of the day, the Christians have only themselves to blame for the lack of reliable historical evidence in support of the man known now as Jesus. They so wanted the diety to be accepted that they virtually wiped the slate clean of all evidence of the humanity of the man about whom the legend was written. But I still personally feel that there is just enough there which is believably written by the authors in question (Paul and Josephus in particular) that I can accept that James really did have a brother that we now refer to as Jesus.

== Bill

Haran

What would Josephus have to be worried about in writing this about Jesus? If I remember right, Josephus wrote his work after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Even if the Romans didn't think Jesus was dead, they knew he would be an old man. No, I don't think they would have been too worried.



With how well-traveled the Jews were during this time period and how well known the Kings had recently been (e.g. Cleopatra, Mark Anthony, and Augustus all knew Herod), I have a problem thinking that this term was not understood on some level as more than just ointment.

Pilate was told directly what it meant and used the same phrase "so-called Christ" when he was seemingly trying to spare Jesus (cf Matt 27:17, 22). I'm sure there were other "so-called Christs" that he dealt with as well and possibly made reports for Caesar...

Though I doubt they knew all the details behind the Jewish use of the word, I think many (especially those in official positions) must have had a general knowledge of what the word meant.

I think reasons have already been expressed as to why part of it is probably authentic. It can be reconstructed as well as any other ancient document can be reconstructed. In my opinion, J.P. Meier has done an excellent job of this. Ultimately, the evidence is there. It is up to you decide what you should accept.

Vorkosigan

Though I doubt they knew all the details behind the Jewish use of the word, I think many (especially those in official positions) must have had a general knowledge of what the word meant.

Unlikely. Remember Pliny, 50 years later, had no idea what Christians believed, and had to write his Emperor to find out what the policy was. And Tacitus apparently has no idea that Christ is a title either.


I think reasons have already been expressed as to why part of it is probably authentic. It can be reconstructed as well as any other ancient document can be reconstructed. In my opinion, J.P. Meier has done an excellent job of this. Ultimately, the evidence is there. It is up to you decide what you should accept.

It's an interpolation in its entirety. It has all the markers -- the presence of seam, no reference to it in the early texts, etc. If it were any other passage in any other document, it would be rejected across-the-board. Only the desperate need to create outside vectors for Jesus has driven scholars to exert their creativity to find reasons to accept it as real. The usual methodology is there and is applied routinely to other documents. It's up to you to decide whether to suspend it in this instance.

Vorkosigan

Haran

Right. But Pliny was writing to Trajan about how to handle Christians. This really doesn't speak to what he thought the word "Christos" means.

Tacitus may have heard the name incorrectly as "Chrestos" (i.e. kind, benevolent). This may reflect some confusion as to how "Christos" was viewed, though it is later than Josephus time.

I'm not sure how any of this would have caused a problem for Josephus when writing the word "Christos".

After Josephus' prediction that Vespasian would be emperor seemingly came true, I doubt that writing "so-called Christos" would have gotten him in much trouble.

I am sure that there are instances of reconstruction within the textual criticism other classical works, though I have no examples. I believe the textual criticism of classical works is what led to the criticism of the Bible itself, so the methodology of reconstruction is solid and was used elsewhere.

I think we can generally understand that Josephus said something about Jesus. There are many well-respected scholars (not just Christian ones) who believe this. I do too.