Josephus on Jesus and James

[historia]

All of the extant manuscripts of Josephus' Antiquity of the Jews contain the following references to Jesus of Nazareth. Did Josephus write this text, or are these reference entirely Christian interpolations?

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as procurator. But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus . . . he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned . . .

[Goat]

I would add that the language is completely different from the rest of his writings.

This is simply not true. I'll refer you to the post above where no less than six scholars over the past century have analyzed the text and found that the language of the TF (at least in the non-interpolated portions) is reflected in the rest of Josephus' writings.

Even those scholars who believe the entire TF is an interpolation often admit that the author has done a good job imitating the language and style of Josephus. If it is a forgery, it is a good one.

Now, this will get us back to the original point then..

What is the evidence for it existing before the 4th century? What external reference is there from before the 4th century is there of this passage? .. Absolutely NONE.

[historia]

Yet, that would be exactly what someone who is a non-Jewish follower of Jesus would proclaim. After all, they would be a gentile follower, and that would fit their self image.

This seems like a fairly easy hypothesis to test. We have the works of several non-Jewish Christian authors from this time period -- the Church Fathers -- who, in your words, would be likely to "proclaim" that Jesus had Gentile followers, since this apparently fit their "self image."

They discuss the life and teachings of Jesus at great length, but yet I am unfamiliar with any of them saying that Jesus had Gentile followers. Quite the opposite. To pick one of many examples, Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, notes that Jesus' ministry was limited just to the Jews, since that is what Matthew explicitly says.

Even if we assume that a non-Jewish Christian might want to believe that Jesus had Gentile followers (a tenuous claim, at best), his sacred scriptures say that is not the case. You have yet to address that point; and that is the whole point of this particular argument.

[Goat]

Yet, that would be exactly what someone who is a non-Jewish follower of Jesus would proclaim. After all, they would be a gentile follower, and that would fit their self image.

This seems like a fairly easy hypothesis to test. We have the works of several non-Jewish Christian authors from this time period -- the Church Fathers -- who, in your words, would be likely to "proclaim" that Jesus had Gentile followers, since this apparently fit their "self image."

They discuss the life and teachings of Jesus at great length, but yet I am unfamiliar with any of them saying that Jesus had Gentile followers. Quite the opposite. To pick one of many examples, Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, notes that Jesus' ministry was limited just to the Jews, since that is what Matthew explicitly says.

Even if we assume that a non-Jewish Christian might want to believe that Jesus had Gentile followers (a tenuous claim, at best), his sacred scriptures say that is not the case. You have yet to address that point; and that is the whole point of this particular argument.

Uh. No, that isn't what I asked. I asked 'What evidence do we have that this passage existed at all'. The whole gentile argument seems like utter and total nonsense to me .. and I just can't get convinced by it.

[historia]

Now, this will get us back to the original point then..

What is the evidence for it existing before the 4th century? What external reference is there from before the 4th century is there of this passage? .. Absolutely NONE.

Right, to our knowledge, no author before the 4th Century quotes the TF.

Of course, to my knowledge, no author in Antiquity or the Middle Ages quotes Josephus' reference to Honi the Circle Drawer in Antiquities 14, either. Does that mean that that section, too, did not exist?

[Goat]

Now, this will get us back to the original point then..

What is the evidence for it existing before the 4th century? What external reference is there from before the 4th century is there of this passage? .. Absolutely NONE.

Right, to our knowledge, no author before the 4th Century quotes the TF.

Of course, to my knowledge, no author in Antiquity or the Middle Ages quotes Josephus' reference to Honi the Circle Drawer in Antiquities 14, either. Does that mean that that section, too, did not exist?

On the other hand, we don't have any evidence that the other passages have been modified..

As for your argument about Josephus making the mistake about Gentiles.. the use of the Greek word for Gentiles is NOT grammar that Josephus would use. In no other place in his entire works, did he use that word at all.

A lot has been made about the word choice..and that seems to be a massive hole in your argument.

[Mithrae]

You made the claim the grammer is Joesphus. Ken Olsen made the claim right opposite of that. His essay is reproduced here although you have to dig down a bit. It seems Ken Olsen was much more detailed in his analysis.

I only quoted a summary statement from Meier's article. His analysis on the language of Josephus takes up three full pages, and is, in fact, longer and more detailed than Olson's. Several other scholars have taken up such an analysis, as well, including van Liempt, Reinach, Thackeray, Martin, Vermes, and all have concluded that the language and the style of (at least portions of) the TF is distinctly Josephan.

Scholars have also reviewed Olson's analysis and found it wanting. Bart Ehrman, in Did Jesus Exist?, pg. 64, summarizes this neatly:

I admit that I'm rather ignorant on this subject. Could you summarize for me/us how analysis of language is done and why it's a good argument one way or the other?

I gather that this is one of the reasons why sections of the bible such as deutero-Isaiah or the pastoral epistles are considered not to be authentic. But in those cases there are other, more obvious reasons to reach that conclusion so language analysis is simply the icing on the cake, as it were. Moreover those are very large bits of text, so there's a good deal of material there to actually analyse.

The Josephus passage is very short however (especially once we've removed the bits we want to remove), so I'd be interested in knowing a bit more about why the claim "The language and style is Josephan" has any merit

[historia]

As for your argument about Josephus making the mistake about Gentiles.. the use of the Greek word for Gentiles is NOT grammar that Josephus would use. In no other place in his entire works, did he use that word at all.

On this point, I believe you are simply mistaken. Josephus uses the term hellenikos here, rendered as "Gentiles" or even "of Greek origin" in some translations. It occurs 25 times in Josephus' writings, per Meier's language analysis.

By contrast, this term only appears once in all of the New Testament, in reference to the Greek language, in Rev. 9:11. New Testament authors preferred to use the term ethnos when describing Gentiles.

So, if a Christian had invented the TF out of whole cloth, which term would he more likely have used?

[historia]

Soldiering on from above. Earlier I provided four arguments for a partial interpolation of the Testimonium:

• 1. Removing the obvious Christian interpolations leaves an original text that reads smoothly.
  2. The claim that Jesus had many non-Jewish followers contradicts the New Testament, as so is unlikely to have been written by a Christian.
  3. The apparent surprise that Jesus' followers continue to persist after his death reflects a dismissive or negative tone, and so is unlikely to have been written by a Christian.
  4. Once we remove the obvious Christian interpolations, the remaining text includes many words and phrases that are typical of Josephus.

The fifth argument I would offer is the placement of the Testimonium in relationship to the text on John the Baptist.

Contrary to Gospels, which always depict John the Baptist as a forerunner to Jesus, Josephus mentions Jesus here in Antiquities 18 before his account of John. Likewise, the section on John is considerably longer than the section on Jesus, and nowhere are the two related to each other.

Had a Christian scribe invented the Testimonium from scratch, and was therefore free to place it anywhere in Josephus' works, would we not expect him to place it after the reference to John? Would we not expect Jesus to get at least equal treatment to John? Maybe even point out some connection between the two?

[historia]

The sixth argument I would offer is that there is no clear motivation here for a Christian scribe to invent and insert into to Josephus a text like this. What would he have hoped to have gained? Who was he trying to fool?

The notion that this was done somehow to plant evidence that Jesus existed is entirely anachronistic. No pagan or Jewish critic of Christianity at this time doubted the existence of Jesus, and no Church Father ever had to defend that idea.

The theological controversies of the day centered on Jesus' divinity. And yet the author of the TF, at best, simply tells us that Jesus is the Messiah. This seems like a pretty low Christology for a Christian of the late-3rd or early-4th Century, when this interpolation is thought to have occurred.

Even if we assume some motivation for inventing the TF out of whole clothe, what would be the purpose? It's not like there is only one copy of Josephus' work at this time. As Eusebius points out, Josephus' works were deposited at the Roman public library. And so anyone could have compared the first interpolated copy with any other to show it was a forgery.

[Josephus] was the most noted of all the Jews of that day, not only among his own people, but also among the Romans, so that he was honored by the erection of a statue in Rome, and his works were deemed worthy of a place in the library.

[Nickman]

I would add that the language is completely different from the rest of his writings.

This is simply not true. I'll refer you to the post above where no less than six scholars over the past century have analyzed the text and found that the language of the TF (at least in the non-interpolated portions) is reflected in the rest of Josephus' writings.

Even those scholars who believe the entire TF is an interpolation often admit that the author has done a good job imitating the language and style of Josephus. If it is a forgery, it is a good one.

The Cambridge History of Judaism vol. 3 (1999) pp. 911 - 912. William Horbury, W.D Davies, John Sturdy

“We may remark here on the passage in Josephus which has occasioned by far more comment than any other, the so-called Testimonium Flavianum (Ant. XVIII. 63 - 4) concerning Jesus. The passage appears in all our manuscripts; but a considerable number of Christian writers -Pseudo-Justin and Theophilus in the second century, Minucius Felix, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Julius Africanus, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Orgen in the third century, and Methodius and Pseudo-Eustathius in the early fourth century - who knew Josephus and cited from his works do not refer to this passage, though one would imagine that it would be the first passage that a Christian apologist would cite. In particular, Origen (Contra Celsum 1.47 and Commentary on Matthew 10.17), who certainly knew Book 18 of the Antiquities and cites five passages from it, explicitly states that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as Christ. The first to cite the Testimonium is Eusebius (c. 324); and even after him, we may note, there are eleven Christian writers who cite Josephus but not the Testimonium. In fact, it is not until Jerome in the early fifth century that we have another reference to it.

http://universitypublishingonline.org/c ... 053662A033

How can it partially be right when it is completely absent and never mentioned by prominent Christians who cite Josephus in early Christianity? This was written by the leading authority on Josephus, Louis H. Feldman.