The great josephus interpolation

[goodwithoutgod]

Flavius Josephus

Christian apologetic fans most popular non-Christian writer that mentions Jesus is Flavius Josephus. Although he was born in 37 CE and could not have been a contemporary of Jesus, he lived close enough to the time to be considered a valuable secondhand source. Josephus was a highly respected and much quoted Roman historian. He died sometime after the year 100 and his two major tomes were The antiquities of the Jews and the wars of the Jews. Antiquities was written sometime after the year 90 CE. In book 18, chapter 3, this paragraph is encountered:

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, and condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and 10,000 other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

This does appear to give historical confirmation for the existence of Jesus. But is it authentic? Most scholars, including most fundamentalist scholars, admit that at least some parts of this paragraph cannot be authentic. Many are convinced that the entire paragraph is a complete forgery, an interpolation inserted by Christians at a later time. There are at least seven solid reasons for this:

1) The paragraph is absent from early copies of the works of Josephus. For example, it does not appear in Origens second century version of Josephus, in Origen Contra Celsum, where Origen fiercely defended Christianity against the heretical views of Celsus. Origen quoted freely from Josephus to prove his points, but never once used this paragraph, which would have been the ultimate ace up his sleeve.

In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear at all until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Emperor Constantine. Bishop Eusebius, a close ally of the Emperor, was instrumental in crystallizing and defining the version of Christianity was to become Orthodox, and he is the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus. Eusebius once wrote that it was a permissible medicine for historians to create fictions " prompting historian Jacob Burckhardt to call Eusebius the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity.

The fact that Josephus " Jesus paragraph shows up at this point in history " at a time when interpolations and revisions were quite common and when the Emperor was eager to demolish gnostic Christianity and replace it with literalistic Christianity " makes the passage quite dubious. Many scholars believe that Eusebius was the forger and interpolator of the paragraph on Jesus that magically appears in the works of Josephus.

2) Josephus would not have called Jesus the Christ or the truth. Whoever wrote these phrases was a believing Christian. Josephus was a messianic Jew, and he truly believed Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah (the Christ), he certainly would have given more than a passing reference to him. Josephus never converted to Christianity. Origen reported that Josephus was not believing in Jesus as the Christ.

3) The passage is out of context. Book 18 (containing the interval of 32 years from the banishment of Archelus to the departure from Babylon) starts with Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 CE and talks about various Jewish sexts at the time, including the Essenes and a sect of Judas the Galilean, which he devotes three times more space than to Jesus. He discusses at great depth the local history in great detail. But oddly this single paragraph can be listed out of the text with no damage to the chapter or the way it flows. Almost as if it was added after the fact, which of course it was.

4) The phrase to this day shows that this is a later interpolation. There was no tribe of Christians during Josephus' time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.

5) In all of Josephus voluminuous works, there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere outside of this tiny paragraph. He relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus. He lists the activities of many other self-proclaimed Messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the magician and the Egyptian Jew Messiah, but is mute about the life of one whom he claims (if he had actually wrote it) is the answer to this messianic hopes.

6) The paragraph mentions that the divine prophets foretold the life Jesus, but Josephus neglects to mention who these prophets were or what they said. In no other place does Josephus connect any Hebrew prediction with the life of Jesus. If Jesus truly had been the fulfillment of divine prophecy, as Christians believe, Josephus wouldve been the one learned enough to document it.

7) The hyperbolic language of the paragraph is uncharacteristic of a careful historian: As the divine prophets had foretold these and 10,000 other wonderful things concerning him This sounds more like sectarian propaganda " in other words, more like the new testament " then objective reporting. It is very unlike Josephus.

Christians should be careful when they refer to Josephus as historical confirmation for Jesus. If we remove the forged paragraph, as we should, the works of Josephus become evidence against historicity. Josephus was a native of Judea and a contemporary of the apostles. He was governor of Galilee for a time, the province in which Jesus allegedly lived and taught. He transversed every part of this province and visited the places where but a generation before Christ performed his prodigies. He resided in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle. He mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event that occurred there during the first 70 years of the Christian era. But Christ was of so little consequence and his deeds too trivial to merit a line from this historians pen.

So gentle readers, anyone wish to debate this little gem?

[Goat]

[Replying to post 1 by goodwithoutgod]

Are you saying the fact that there were forgeries attached to the works of Josephus are evidence against Jesus existence? Or against his supposed Divinity? Against his supposed Messiahship? Or any combination of the three.

In my personal opinion, it is evidence against using Josephus as a source for anything about Jesus. It's been tampered with, and therefore unreliable as a source of evidence. That means there is that much less evidence for a historical Jesus.

[goodwithoutgod]

[Replying to post 30 by Goat]

Great point and I agree. IN my opinion the great myth is like a security blanket with tons of frays, holes and tattered strings. From a quick glance is looks like a very well woven blanket, but upon closer inspection you see all of the tears, all one has to do it to grab a string and begin to tug and it starts to unravel.

[goodwithoutgod]

[Replying to post 27 by historia]

Sorry for late response I have been horribly ill the last week. I have to write two 1500 word papers by tomorrow, and need to knock that out, but wanted to hit a few points in reference to your reply.

Any critic of christianity was considered heretical, so I think my reference in to his (Celsus) "heretical views" to be accurate.

creative writing and copious usage of interpolations and pseudepigrapha was rampant back then, regardless of the century, but really relevant in regards to the NT and the 3-4th century as that was when a lot of this happened.

No, actually many scholars these days are coming around to the evidence coming out from forensic analysis of this fable.

"This argument has always struck me as strained. Antiquities is a massive 20-volume text covering topics large and small. Josephus employed two assistants to help complete the work. He often digresses from his major points, relating accounts of certain ancillary people and events before returning to his main narrative. These too can be "listed (sic) out of the text with no damage to the chapter or the way it flows," but no one concludes, on those grounds alone, that they are interpolations."

Allow me to expound my thinking on this...

In regards to this passage, even at a glance anyone can see this as being an absurd paragraph from the hand of a devout Jew and sophisticated author who otherwise writes far more elegant prose, and usually responsibly explains to his readers anything strange. This passage is self evidently a fawning and gullible Christian fabrication, in fact it is derived from the Emmaus narrative in the gospel of Luke, inserted into the text at a point where it does not even make any narrative sense, apart from being in a survey of the crimes of Pointius Pilate that contributed to inciting the Jews to war in the long run. There is no plausible way the passage fits that context: the Christians are not being connected with the war in any such way, and the Jewish elite are not outraged by the execution of Jesus but in fact endorse it.

Some historians have tried to rescue this passage by rewriting it, removing everything that Josephus would surely never say, and then claiming he surely said what's left and Christians just changed it up. But this is such an extraordinarily improbable thesis it must be rejected outright. For example, Josephus must've mentioned Christ because he presumes it when he explains the name Christian in the last line, but there is no plausible way, Josephus would say this without explaining to his intended Gentile readers what a Christ was and what it meant for Jesus to have been one, and thus why Josephus is mentioning it or how Jesus even came to acquire the moniker. So we can strike those two sentences.

He also would not have written such unintelligible things as "if we really must call him a man" or "doer of incredible deeds" or "teacher Of the truth" without explaining to his Gentile readers what he meant " giving examples, as Josephus normally would. So those sentences must be struck.

Nor would Josephus say things like "he won over" many Jews and Greeks, without explaining exactly to what he won them over " and thus what defined someone as a Christian, what doctrines they held. Josephus does this for every other sect he discusses (such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and under the rubric of the 'fourth philosophy, the Zealots). So he certainly would do so here, the more so as his remarks would be unfathomable to most of his readers without that explanation. So we can strike that sentence.

Nor would Josephus give his readers a mysteriously truncated summary of what can only mean the gospel story of 'leading men' accusing Jesus and getting him executed " without explaining what any of that meant. What leading men? What accusations? Why? Why did Pilate accede to them? Was Jesus guilty? Why did Pilate conclude he was? Why did the Jews execute Jesus themselves? And if he was such a wonderful, truth telling, miracle performing wise man whom many loved, how did he end up being convicted of a capital crime? Josephus could not possibly have written this so that sentence must go.

Likewise why does Josephus mention Jesus appearing on the third day, which is a Christian creedal statement that Josephus would not possibly employ without explaining why. So we cannot have written this either. Surely it is absurd to think Josephus agreed that Jesus fulfilled biblical prophecy " at all, much less and these specific details, as this passage says. So he certainly did not write that sentence either.

That leaves us with only one sentence left: "and there was about this time Jesus, a wise man". After which no story follows. We can conclude Josephus did write this either. He discusses several men named Jesus throughout his works, so he would certainly either identify this one (for example he identifies another Jesus as the son of Damneus), or explain why he is suddenly interrupting his narrative to talk about this one. Otherwise this transition is simply too abrupt and bizarre for Josephus.

All these improbable sentences stack up to an enormous improbability that Josephus wrote any of this.

Work cited:

Carrier, Richard., On the historicity of jesus: why we might have reason to doubt. South Yorkshire, UK, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014. Print.

[Korah]

NOTE: I tried moving my reply to goodwithoutgod's post here to where it belongs as a reply to my Post 118 in "Why are all the scholars changing their minds...?", but that cancelled out his formatting with BOLD type. This current thread on "the great josephus interpolation" is no longer used, however, and I already got his permission to reply whatever way worked.

[Replying to post 23 by Korah]

sigh, my responses in bold.

"You take for granted that NOTHING was written about Jesus until DECADES after his death. You are right that I take that for granted because an exhaustive amount of study has come to that conclusion, not my opinion, substantiated fact; Gospels were written: Mark (60 to 75 CE), Matthew (80 to 90 CE), Luke (80 to 90 CE based on the Gospels of Mark), and John (80 to 110 CE) (Albl 283)


That's merely a COMPROMISE. and you are demonstrating the very definition of christian apologetic...you can tap dance and wave smoke all you want, the facts show different.

Sorry, GwoG, but facts are FACTS, not some inoffensive gentlemen's agreement to state a position in the middle. Some academic scholars push Mark into the 40's. In any case your stated dates say nothing about the dates the underlying sources were written, which were necessarily earlier. As for the gospels themselves, no one has been able to refute the position that all were written before 70 AD.

Even the non-believer Peter Kirby in his website EarlyChristianWritings.com gives 30-60 as the date for the Passion Narrative, which allows for the possibility that the last few chapters of each of the four gospels was basically written right then.

Inconsequential. If you base your knowledge on a website then you may need to conduct some more study in this field. I can find you a website that says we all have inner aliens called thetans, and we get sick from the radiation poisoning from their souls....doesn't make it true. I can show you answersingenesis website in which ken ham spins young earth creationism, intelligent design and pseudo science to tell everyone that dinosaurs and man romped the earth together 6,000 years ago....doesnt make it true, in fact, it is an outright lie, misinformation at its best.

True, but irrelevant to gospel scholarship. Academic scholars agree that the Passion Narrative was early.

In my own thesis that there are seven written eyewitness records of Jesus.

Good to hear you have a thesis, they are like opinions, everyone can write one, doesn't make them factual.

I propose that the teen-aged John Mark wrote this underlying source as his personal diary of the week he knew Jesus before Jesus died.

Great theory, I propose the author of Mark was an unknown author, and guess what? So do most modern scholars. Most modern scholars reject the tradition which ascribes it to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of Peter, and regard it as the work of an unknown author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative...this is called pseudepigrapha.

Nice that you simplify Mark down to one author, but you do acknowledge as factual that the author worked with various sources--necessarily earlier than the final writing. The wane of Form Criticism and the ascendancy of Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses has shifted the balance toward eyewitnesses.

I argue that the Discourses in the Gospel of John were written even earlier as Nicodemus's job to gather evidence against Jesus. That Nicodemus's viewpoint changes radically during the course of three years is evidence that this was originally written as on-the-scene notes.

Reaching, and reaching hard. No I argue that the VAST majority of biblical scholars who have studied this their entire professional lives are correct and the majority do not believe that John or one of the Apostles wrote it, and trace it instead to a "Johannine community" which traced its traditions to John.

That's itself an apologetic stance that I'm surprised you repeat, but it is true that Johannine scholarship gets split between conservatives who want John to be basically unitary and from John as against more critical scholarship that seeks for source texts. Sources are necessarily earlier and thus could be from eyewitnesses, as I contend.

I do not contend that the Apostle Matthew wrote the gospel bearing that name, but that he wrote notes during Jesus's lifetime is quite reasonable, resulting in what was soon called the Logia (indicating not just sayings, as Schliermacher mistakenly thought, but what we would call a gospel), perhaps modern scholarship's Q or more likely the Twelve-Source. Perhaps this was so early that it was only in Aramaic, say six to ten chapters, but the later portions originating in Greek could have been his own additions. As "Q" or whatever it was, it was itself known and used in the Gospel of Mark as the better scholars now acknowledge. Thus Mark 2:14-15 should be regarded as his own personal testimony that was later copied into Matthew 9:9.

Intriguing. In regards to Matthew, the anonymous author was probably a highly educated Jew, intimately familiar with the technical aspects of Jewish law, and the disciple Matthew was probably honored within his circle. The author drew on three main sources to compose his gospel: the Gospel of Mark; the hypothetical collection of sayings known as the Q source; and material unique to his own community, called "Special Matthew", or the M source. Note the part where I said...disciple matthew honored...and anonymous writer... also define "better scholars".

Papias said that Matthew had a major role in writing Matthew, though I myself would limit it to Q1 and the Twelve-Source part of the Triple Tradition. The final author of Matthew probably is anonymous, but he used some earlier eyewitness written texts.

Acts 12:12 records that Peter went to John Mark's house (apparently in 44 A.D when Herod Agrippa I died, Acts 12:21-23).

AH yes, this is after a "angel of the lord" appeared and smote the chains off of him and rescued him from his cell

..If this was not when Peter and John Mark completed the Gospel of Mark (and even non-believer scholars James Crossley and Maurice Casey date Mark very early, based on Mark 13 being a response to the Caligula Decree of 41 A. D.), it would have been when much of the first 13 chapters of Mark (preceding the already written Passion Narrative) would have been written.

seems like a lot of conjecture there...."this may have been when they wrote this" and how exactly did you ascertain that?

The 44 A. D. date comes from Acts 12:12, as I stated, and this is right where the focus of Acts shifts from Peter to Paul. Peter's eyewitness record is written down in much of Mark and Acts up to this point.

All the gospels were completed by 70 A. D., as demonstrated by the liberal scholar John A. T. Robinson.

Wrong, there may be a handful of people who believe that, but then again, people can believe in the most amazing things...

.That they include seven written eyewitness records I have shown in my thread Gospel Eyewitnesses at Christian Forums:

Again, I can point you to answersingenesis website where Ken Ham purports to prove the world is literally 6,000 years oldb]Work Cited:

Albl, Martin C. Reason, Faith, and Tradition: Explorations in Catholic Theology. Winona: Anselm Academic, Christian Brothers Publications, 2009. Print.

After I wrote the post to which GwoG responded, I presented here in DC&R my series of posts of Gospel Eyewitnesses in the thread "How can we determine which parts of scripture are true?" For a link to it, go to my Post #7 in this current thread for a list of my most relevant posts there.

[goodwithoutgod]

[Replying to post 33 by Korah]

Mark is an interesting fable isn't it? Since Mark is the oldest of the synoptic gospels, of which the authors of matthew, and luke based their stories. All scholars agree that the last 12 verses of Mark, are highly dubious and are considered interpolations. The earliest ancient documents of mark end right after the women find the empty tomb. This means that in the first biography, on which the others based their reports, there is no post-resurrection appearance or ascension of jesus. uhoh.

Noticing this problem, a Xtian scribe decided to add verses 9-20.

John 20:30-31 - "but these are written that ye might believe that jesus is the christ, the son of god; and that believing ye might have life through his name".......just about says it all right there, let me parphrase; "we are making up these stories to help people believe...the story."

This sounds like a red flag that what we are reading should betaken with a huge grain of salt. Kinda reminds me of the book life of constantine, ""make them to astonish" in reference to some of the shenanigans his influence on christianity had.

Matthew is riddled with whimsical creative writings as well. I find it interesting that the writer of matthew refers to "matthew" in the third person. Matthew claims jesus was born in "the days of herod the king." Yet Herod died in 4 BCE. Luke reports that jesus was born "when Cyrenius (Quirinius) was governor of Syria." Cyrenius became governor of Syria in 6 CE...that is a discrepancy of 9 years. Luke says Jesus was born during a roman census, and it is true there was a census in 6 CE. This would have been when jesus was 9 years old according to matthew. There is no evidence of an earlier census during the reign of Augustine. Which is true?

Matthew also reports that Herod slaughtered all first born in the land in order to execute jesus. No historian, contemporary or later, ever mentions this alleged genocide, an event that should have caught someones attention....like the many miraculous stories of jesus, no one at the time thought they were cool enough to record...odd don't you think?

The genealogies of Jesus present a particularly embarrassing example of why the gospel writers are not reliable historians. Matthew gives a genealogy of Jesus consisting of 28 names from David down to Joseph. Luke gives a reverse genealogy of Jesus consisting up 43 names from Joseph back to David. They each purport to prove that Jesus is of royal blood, though neither of them explains why Joseph genealogy is even relevant if he was not Jesus' father: remember, according to the story Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost. Matthew's line goes from David's son Solomon, while Luke's goes from David's son Nathan. The two genealogies could not have been the same person.

Another problem is that Luke's genealogy of Jesus goes through Nathan, which was not the royal line. Nor could Matthew's line the Royal after Jeconiah because the divine prophecy says of Jeconiah that "no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling anymore in Judah." (Jeremiah 22:30)

even if Luke's line is truly through Mary, Luke reports that Mary was a cousin to Elizabeth, who was of the tribe of Levi, not the royal line.

I could go on forever, but suffice it to say the Gospels are anything but relevant or factual.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 34 by goodwithoutgod]
Nothing you say here is relevant to the seven written eyewitness accounts about Jesus contained in the four canonical gospels. You claimed that no eyewitness ever wrote about Jesus. I refer you again to my Post #7 in this thread where I list (and provide a link to) the most relevant posts presenting the seven eyewitness accounts, in "How can we determine which parts of scripture are true?"

My Thesis itself arose from getting tired of so many New Atheists making false claims that we know there were no eyewitnesses who wrote about Jesus. There has always been external evidence that Matthew wrote Q (or other substantial portions of the Gospel of Matthew) and that Mark wrote down Peter's account. The latter is substantiated by so much mention of Peter in Mark. And now that Q is known to have been used in writing Mark, we can regard Mark 2:14-15 as internal evidence that Matthew wrote Q.

That's long been routinely believed, that eyewitnesses Peter and Matthew wrote Synoptic gospels or sources within them. I havn't made an issue until recently of what I learned in 1980 about eyewitnesses in the Gospel of John. I realize that this is not common knowledge. Evangelicals and Catholics prefer to believe that John (or his school) wrote that entire gospel. It's actually more reasonable to believe that its sources come from other early Christians who are named in that gospel, namely Nicodemus and Andrew. Only two years ago did I figure out that John Mark himself wrote down the Passion Narrative part of John. As I said, see my link in Post #7.

[Zzyzx]

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[Replying to post 34 by goodwithoutgod]
Nothing you say here is relevant to the seven written eyewitness accounts about Jesus contained in the four canonical gospels.

The supposed "seven written eyewitness accounts" is nothing more than an OPINION that has not been taken seriously, let alone accepted or respected, by scholars, theologians or even website members -- in spite of it being promoted for forty years.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 36 by Zzyzx]
I don't think arguments from authority are suitable for DC&R. (And it has been two years since I started promoting the whole theory, with no serious refutations yet forthcoming.) Can GwoG do his own work of reading and refuting as he said he would? (I havn't seen him claim lately, however, that he probably already had written a refutation for whatever I might say.)

[Zzyzx]

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[Replying to post 36 by Zzyzx]
I don't think arguments from authority are suitable for DC&R.

That much is correct. Further, citing one's own unpublished, unaccepted work appears to be appealing to "authority" that does not even exist.

(And it has been two years since I started promoting the whole theory, with no serious refutations yet forthcoming.)

Can you debate the topic using sources accepted by theologians and scholars rather than unaccepted personal opinions?

Can GwoG do his own work of reading and refuting as he said he would? (I havn't seen him claim lately, however, that he probably already had written a refutation for whatever I might say.)

I do not speak for anyone other than myself, but I have no interest in refuting opinions that have not been DEMONSTRATED to be substantial, substantiated, verified, and at least considered serious by scholars and theologians. Personal opinions and conjectures do not qualify for serious consideration.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 38 by Zzyzx]
Sorry, Z,
My Gospel Eyewitnesses (that there are seven written eyewitness accounts of Jesus used as sources for the four gospels) is my own discovery. I've been derided at Atheist websites as "the new Galileo". You have to take my reasoning as it stands, I cannot footnote any people who say the same as I do.

It might seem that positing Peter and Matthew as eyewitness sources for the Synoptics would seem ordinary. However, my own markings in my Greek text determine where I divide between the loosely related and originally Aramaic Q1 and Twelve-Source most likely written by Matthew vs. the closely parallel originally Greek text of the rest of Proto-Mark. My listings of the division in Mark is my own. As for Q2 I have not yet finalized whether these more exact parallels between Matthew and Luke come also from Peter or whether they came later from a disciple of John the Baptist and/or Qumran. This is all my creative analysis, and I came up with it before Richard Bauckham's 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses made such thoughts academically respectable. I am a Contrarian and have had the life-long scholarly advantage of regarding Form Criticism as bunk. I don't have blinders on like the scholarly Establishment.

That the L Source within Luke was written by Simon the son of Cleopas (and the man who accompanied him on the road to Emmaus) is my own idea from 30 years ago, but never published anywhere until 2006 in Noesis, a journal not read by academic scholars.

That leaves four eyewitnesses from the Gospel of John alone. Three of them were included in my Significance of John paper accepted for publication in 1980 but never printed until 1988 in (again) a lesser publication not read by Bible scholars (yet another high-IQ journal, not now extant). I did get some indirect benefit from Form Criticism in Bultmann's discovery in 1941 of the Signs Source and that the Discourses were also from source(s). Thus from Howard M. Teeple's 1974 Literary Origin of the Gospel of John I could use his more careful source-analysis of John to identify Andrew as the writer of the Signs Source and (agreeing with Sidney Temple's 1975 The Core Gospel) Nicodemus as the writer of the Discourses (such intellectual expositions being above the pay grade of the Galilean disciples). But Teeple held that John was much later, so I can't blame him for my ideas, just that I largely accept his source criticism. Teeple has never been refuted--only Evangelicals speak ill of the atheist Teeple and anyone else who criticized him later reversed themselves (Dwight Moody Smith and Robert Kysar). Much of the rest of John I attribute to the Apostle John, largely following the Teeple's editing details. Andrew as a source and John as the final authority is suggested by the Muratorian Canon, but I identified Andrew as a source from internal criticism.

That there was a seventh eyewitness I only worked out two years ago. John Mark is usually thought of (if at all) as writing down Peter's memoirs for the Gospel of Mark, but I believe he was old enough to have written the Passion Narrative as in John (where he is the Disciple Know to the High Priest), less some later additions.

My completed Thesis got worked out in 2012 on Theology Web (back in business again after a total computer crash), presented to atheists at Freethought and Rationalism Discussion Board (itself out of business now), and my Gospel Eyewitnesses text is still available at Early Christian Writings and Christian Forums. To find it less elegantly here at DC&R go as stated to Post #7 in this thread, follow the link to "How can we determine which parts of scripture are true?" where you will find my candidate texts. Nowhere yet have a encountered a serious attempt at refutation. It's like it's so obvious--the emperor has no clothes, all the eyewitness sources are just there in plain sight to a careful Higher Critic.