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This is just one of a few mentions of Jesus outside of the Bible. I am not sure if the church ever has discussed things like that.
Personally I believe that it is very possible that there were also other things/texts that mention Jesus, but they were either lost or most likely destroyed.
Oh boy, you really want to get into Paul. OK, but it is going to be a long treatise, and really should be another thread, as I suggested earlier.
Short answer is, just because YOU believe in a god, or a Jesus, doesn't prove anything.
OK so you are atheist so you own''t accept anything about religion. Start another thread but I don't know why atheists come to a Christian forum. Maybe you can explain in another thread.
One last thought for now, why do atheists seem to believe that the Romans in a backwater province were such excellent record keepers, and that there is some vast, Indiana Jones-like storehouse containing documents describing all the events that were going on in 1st century Palestine?
It doesn't exist. It just doesn't. When it comes to real contemporaneous, not near-contemporaneous documents and histories from that era and place, we have the Biblical texts, Josephus....and that's about it.
On your argument, we write off all possibility of knowledge about 1st century Palestine.
So here's a homework assignment for you:
We have multiple individuals in 1st century Palestine who claimed to be Messiahs and attempted military insurrections against the Roman occupation, something Jesus never did. Surely, these Roman historians to which you refer will have documented these insurrections.
Give me some contemporaneous references in the prodigious Roman histories to which you refer, to the following individuals from ancient Palestine:
1) Athronges, who declared himself King of the Jews and inflicted a series of humiliating military defeats on the Romans in 4 BC before his eventual defeat.
2) The unnamed messianic Prophet of Gerizim, who led thousands of followers to Mt. Gerizim who had to be dispersed by Roman infantry and cavalry circa 36 AD.
3) Theudas, who claimed to be able to part the River Jordan and led a large group of his followers into the desert circa 46 AD before a military battle with Roman forces.
4) The unnamed Jewish Egyptian "prophet" who led his 30,000 followers to Jerusalem (before its destruction) in the early 1st century, with the promise that the walls would fall at his command and he would take control of the city. Roman military forces attacked and he ran away.
So, these were pretty significant events from the view of the Romans, right? Big military battles, threats to the Roman state. Far bigger events than the life of Jesus, from the Roman's perspective. There should be, like hundreds of references in these records you cite, if this period was so well recorded.
Let me know just, say, four references for each of these worthies. I'll wait here until you can look them up. Should be easy.
(Hint: You're only going to find those references from one historian. Guess who?)
Then we'll discuss why the references you claim to exist, don't. And why what you think is a forgery, clearly isn't.
From Cupper3's silence, I would guess he's not able to find any reference to these very significant events from the supposedly prodigious document stores and histories of 1st century Palestine.
Why is this?
Because Josephus is the closest source we have to a non-Christian historian reporting on the events of 1st century Palestine. He lists all those four very significant events, and NO ONE ELSE.
So, we know (and by your silence you concur) that Roman documentation of the significant events of 1st century Palestine was almost nil. Your argument that if Jesus existed, there should be some contemporaneous documentation is a fail.
As I said, there is an atheist misconception that Romans wrote everything down, that there are vast archives documenting the minutiae of the Roman occupation, and if there is no reference to Jesus in that archive, why we then have to presume that absence of evidence = evidence of absence.
Here are the other reasons why that argument is fallacious, and why you should challenge it every time it pops its head up:
1) There is little to no Roman documentation of the period. There are inscriptions, tombstones, stellae, etc., but nothing like the sort of surviving textual written histories that Cupper3 claims is there.
2) The best surviving textual items of evidence we have are the individual texts that make up the New Testament, other documents of the early Church (such as the writings of the Patristic fathers, and the Didache, which was an early Catechism of the Church), and the history of the time and era that was written by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, who was working for his Roman patrons. Using the New Testament texts to show the likelihood that Jesus existed clearly is not circular reasoning, as we are using it simply to establish a historical claim, not to argue for Jesus' divinity.
3) There is little surviving Roman documentation because:
a) Most Roman soldiers stationed in Palestine at the time were illiterate. Their officers could almost certainly read and write, but the vast majority of soldiers were not able to write even if they wanted to. A significant number, were not even Roman, and were from conquered territories without a written language. Most orders and after-action reports within the Legion were given orally. There would be no reasons to create a written list of the charges against Jesus, an order for his execution, or a description of where He was buried. Why would the Romans care? Try Him, kill Him, and let His people figure out where to bury him.
b) The most common methods of writing (papyrus, sheepskin scrolls, or clay tablets) were either expensive or unlikely to survive two millennia to our present day, unless copied and recopied.
c) To survive in any kind of official Roman archive, any such (quite heavy) documents would have to be transported back to Rome from the backwater of Palestine, a long and arduous journey, at the end of the Roman occupation. For the Romans, priority would be given to transporting war-making tools, gold, jewels, objects of art, and other items to be placed in the storehouse of the Empire or given to one's political patrons, not the equivalent of old bills of lading or prisoner manifests. If they had survived to that time, they would have been jettisoned to make way for more important baggage.
d) I would guess that Cupper3 is young enough that he has never actually been in an army of occupation, or had extensive experience within a bureaucracy. I can assure you that armies of occupation spend most of their time "occupying." There is rarely a requirement, then or now, to write down everything that happened. (The Nazi occupation is a more recent exception, as the purpose of the Holocaust was expressly to destroy the Jewish race, and so the SS kept extensive records to show their superiors what a good job they were doing. Imperial Rome had no such interest in exterminating "their" Jews, who also represented their tax base, so the execution of the occasional Jew who became a threat would be unlikely to be documented. The presence of a crucified Jew on a hill would be considered a good enough show of force to the local population.) I doubt many of the documents I generated in the Army (in those pre-digital days) survived just a few decades, as administrators purge things they don't need to keep.
More importantly, bureaucrats (and Rome was the ultimate bureaucracy of its time) don't like to maintain records of things that could come back to bite them. The Crucifixion of Jesus could have turned out badly, from the contemporary Roman view. The Jews could have revolted and sacked the garrison, causing greater problems for Pilate's superiors. Why write down administrative decisions until you know for sure that your decisions won't cause you trouble with your superiors? The execution of the odd Jew in a provincial backwater would not have been considered noteworthy enough to even be mentioned in official dispatches in the hopes of an atta-boy from Pilate's superiors. Killing a pesky Jew would have been simply part of Pilate's job description in keeping Caesar's peace.
e) There is no evidence or claim that Jesus aroused any official attention from the Roman authorities until shortly before His execution (why would they care about a wandering peaceful rabbi?), so what kind of contemporaneous documentation do atheist Mythicists expect to see? What kind of documentation would even be conceivably generated by the Roman bureaucracy in such a case? At best you would see an arrest order, an execution order, or a burial order (and for reasons explained above, that would be very unlikely), whose historical importance for preservation would not be seen by the Romans.
So again, other than textual evidence from the emerging Christian movement (which is extensive and our best evidence), we would not expect to see Roman evidence of the historical existence of Jesus until his followers began to become a thorn in the side of the Empire - which happened very rapidly in historical terms and is just what we do see, in the writings of Pliny the Younger and others. We also begin to see disparaging representations of the the Christian faith (as in the Alaxamenos graffito from 200 AD found near the Palatine Hill in Rome, which depicts a crucified Jesus with the head of an ass), apparently mocking a Roman soldier (Alaxamenos) who had converted to Christianity:
The inscription states in crude Greek, Αλεξαμενος ϲεβετε θεον. ϲεβετε ("Alexamenos worships [his] God") The donkey head is based on a misapprehension by the Romans that the Christians worshipped a donkey. Tertullian wrote near the end of the 2nd century of the beginning of the third that Christians and Jews were mistakenly accused by the Romans of worshipping such a deity, probably in the desire to create a slur that would denigrate the rising movement. He also mentions an apostate Jew who carried around Carthage a caricature of a Christian with ass's ears and hooves, labeled Deus Christianorum Onocoetes ("the God of the Christians begotten of an ass")
So, although the early epistles establish the core beliefs of the Christian faith very shortly after Jesus's death - far too short a time for the creation of a new, radically different religion if based on a non-existent person - we see what we would expect to see from the Roman historical evidence if Jesus "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried" at the end of His earthly ministry.
What we don't see is what would support the Mythicist's theories - early attestations that there were hostile witnesses who said that Jesus did not exist.
While it can be difficult (not impossible) to disprove a negative in some instances, if the Mythicists are correct, we would expect to see attestations from the Pharisees and other opponents to the early Church, Romans, and others who said this "Jesus" fellow was made up and a total fantasy - sometime before the 18th century, that is, when the Mythicist theory began to circulate among crackpots.
There were hostile witnesses to be sure, but what we see instead are arguments by them that Jesus was a miracle worker, or a magician, or a fraud, or a sorcerer, or was the product of an illegitimate birth. (The latter theory has gained popularity among white supremacists (including Hitler), who can't countenance the Jewishness of Jesus and insist he must have been fathered by a Roman soldier, probably a blonde blue-eyed Aryan one.) We don't have any hostile witnesses who said, "Hey, I (or my dad) was in Bethelehem / Nazareth / Jerusalem and I never heard of any such feller!"
Why not, cupper3? What contemporaneous evidence can you produce that shows that there were witnesses who were in a position to know and who said Jesus didn't exist? If mythicists are correct that "some kind of historical evidence should exist" in the Roman archives, why do we not see any similar type evidence for the non-existence of Christ, which would have been powerful evidence to suppress the rising Christian movement.
You can't even argue that such information existed and was suppressed or destroyed as the Empire became Christian, as the contemporaneous hostile witness evidence exists, but none of it supports your claim that Jesus didn't exist.
So, what about Josephus?
Last edited by Arizona Mike; 09-17-2014 at 10:01 AM..
Cupper3 made the claim that "I'm sure you are aware that it is almost universally accepted that the 147 words referring to Jesus in Josephus is a forgery and added later. You ARE aware of that, are you not? Forgeries prove nothing."
This is a common party line on atheist websites, but it couldn't be further from the truth.
For those unfamiliar with the disputed passage, Flavius Josephus, who lived from circa 30 AD to 100 AD.
He was a Jew who fought against the Romans, was enslaved, freed, and later granted Roman citizenship. In one of his histories, he made 2 comments about Jesus. It's been argued that one, or both, references were added, or bolstered, later by Christian scribes to bolster the Christian case. The amount of that interpolation, if any is hotly debated, and Mythicists go outside the academic mainstream to argue that the entire reference should be disregarded
The Australian history blogger Tim O'Neil (who is himself an atheist) did the best analysis of why Josephus's comments offer good evidence for the historical evidence of Jesus. I'll quote some excerpts. The original post, which detail why the Mythicist theory is a load of horse-dung, on his classical history website: Armarium Magnum: Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that Show Jesus Never Existed at All by David Fitzgerald which were in a review of a lackluster Mythicist theory book. I'll quote from the 1st blog post, the second was in response to the original author's attempts at a critique, which pretty much demolishes this particular Mythicist argument: Armarium Magnum: The Jesus Myth Theory: A Response to David Fitzgerald.
And as O'Neill notes, no, Cupper3, it is not "almost universally accepted" among scholars that this passage is a forgery.
...the only writer of the period who seems to have had any interest at all in people like Jesus was Yosef ben Matityahu or Flavius Josephus. This means that if Josephus did not mention Jesus while mentioning other such figures like Theudas and John the Baptist, people like Fitzgerald would actually be able to make a real argument from silence. The problem is that Josephus does mention Jesus - twice. So any Myther book or article has to spill a lot of ink trying to explain these highly inconvenient mentions away.
Getting rid of the first reference to Jesus, the one in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, Book XVIII.3.4 is made a little easier by the fact that at least some of it is not original to Josephus and was added by Christian scribes later. The textus receptus of the passage has Josephus saying things about Jesus that no Jewish non-Christian would say, such as "He was the Messiah" and "he appeared to them alive on the third day". So, not surprisingly, Fitzgerald takes the usual Myther tack and rejects the whole passage as a later addition and rejects the idea that Josephus mentioned Jesus here at all.
He does acknowledge the alternative idea, that Josephus' mention of Jesus was simply added to, but yet again he attributes this to "wishful apologists". This is a total distortion of the state of academic play on the question of this passage. As several surveys of the academic literature have shown, the majority of scholars now accept that there was an original mention of Jesus in Antiquities XVIII.3.4 and this includes the majority of Jewish and non-Christian scholars, not merely "wishful apologists". This is partly because once the more obvious interpolated phrases are removed, the passage reads precisely like what Josephus would be expected to write and also uses characteristic language found elsewhere in his works. But it is also because of the 1970 discovery of what seems to be a pre-interpolation version of Josephus' passage, uncovered by Jewish scholar Schlomo Pines of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Professor Pines found an Arabic paraphrase of the Tenth Century historian Agapius which quotes Josephus' passage, but not in the form we have it today. This version, which seems to draw on a copy of Josephus' original, uninterpolated text, says that Jesus was believed by his followers to have been the Messiah and to have risen from the dead, which means in the original Josephus was simply reporting early Christian beliefs about Jesus regarding his supposed status and resurrection. This is backed further by a Syriac version cited by Michael the Syrian which also has the passage saying "he was believed to be the Messiah". The evidence now stacks up heavily on the side of the partial authenticity of the passage, meaning there is a reference to Jesus as a historical person in precisely the writer we would expect to mention him. So how does Fitzgerald deal with the Arabic and Syriac evidence? Well, he doesn't. He is either ignorant of it or he conveniently ignores it.
Not content with ignoring inconvenient key counter-evidence, Fitzgerald is also happy to simply make things up. He talks about how the Second Century Christian apologist Origen does not mention the Antiquities XVII.3.4 reference to Jesus (which is true, but not surprising) and then claims "Origen even quotes from Antiquities of the Jews in order to prove the historical existence of John the Baptist, then adds that Josephus didn't believe in Jesus, and criticises him for failing to mention Jesus in that book!" (p. 53) Which might sound like a good argument to anyone who does not bother to check self-published authors' citations. But those who do will turn to Origen's Contra Celsum I.4 and find the following:
Now this writer [Josephus], although not believing in Jesus as the Messiah, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless-being, although against his will, not far from the truth-that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was "the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah",--the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice.
So Origen does not say Josephus "didn't believe in Jesus", just that he did not believe Jesus was the Messiah (which supports the Arabic and Syriac evidence on the pre-interpolation version of Antiquities XVII.3.4) And far from criticising Josephus "for failing to mention Jesus in that book", Origen actually quotes Josephus directly doing exactly that - the phrase "αδελφος Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου" (the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah") is word for word the phrase used by Josephus in his other mention of Jesus, found at Antiquities XX.9.1. And he does not refer to and quote Josephus mentioning Jesus just in Contra Celsum I.4, but he also does so twice more: in Contra Celsum II:13 and in Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei X.17. It is hard to say if this nonsense claim of Fitzgerald's is mere incompetence or simply a lie. I will be charitable and put it down to another of this amateur's bungles.
So Fitzgerald then turns to this second mention of Jesus by Josephus, the one that is actually mentioned and quoted by Origen as noted above, and attempts to make it disappear as well. Except the mention in Antiquities XX.9.1 is much trickier prospect for Myther theorists than the clearly edited mention in Antiquities XVII.3.4. The second mention is made in passing in a passage where Josephus is detailing an event of some significance and one which he, as a young man, would have witnessed himself.
In 62 AD, the 26 year old Josephus was in Jerusalem, having recently returned from an embassy to Rome. He was a young member of the aristocratic priestly elite which ruled Jerusalem and were effectively rulers of Judea, though with close Roman oversight and only with the backing of the Roman procurator in Caesarea. But in this year the procurator Porcius Festus died while in office and his replacement, Lucceius Albinus, was still on his way to Judea from Rome. This left the High Priest, Hanan ben Hanan (usually called Ananus), with a freer rein that usual. Ananus executed some Jews without Roman permission and, when this was brought to the attention of the Romans, Ananus was deposed.
This was a momentous event and one that the young Josephus, as a member of the same elite as the High Priest, would have remembered well. But what is significant is what he says in passing about the executions that that triggered the deposition of the High Priest:
Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so (the High Priest) assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Messiah, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.
This second reference to Jesus is difficult for Mythers to deal with. Dismissing it as another interpolation does not work, since a Christian interpolator in a later century is hardly going to invent something as significant as the deposition of the High Priest just to slip in this passing reference to Jesus which, unlike the interpolated elements in the Antiquities XVII.3.4 passage, makes no Christian claims about Jesus. Then there are the three citations and quotations of this passage by Origen mentioned above. Fitzgerald seems totally oblivious to these, but Origen was writing in the mid-Third Century AD, which shows this mention existed in Josephus then - ie while Christianity was still a small, illegal and persecuted sect and so much too early for any Christian doctoring of this text.
But Fitzgerald falls back on one of the several gambits Mythers use to get their argument off this awkward and pointy hook. He notes that Josephus tells us the successor of the deposed High Priest was one "Jesus, son of Damneus" and then triumphantly concludes that the "Jesus, who was called Messiah" is not a reference to Jesus of Nazareth at all, but actually a reference to this "Jesus, son of Damneus" instead.
While he declares this ingenious solution to his problem to be "the only (explanation) that makes sense" (p. 61), it is actually highly flawed. He claims, following fellow Myther Richard Carrier, that the words "who was called Messiah" were "tacked on" and that the Jesus mentioned as the brother of the executed James was this "Jesus, son of Damneus". But this does not explain why Josephus would identify one son (James) by reference to his brother and the other (Jesus) by reference to their father. Josephus does this nowhere else in his works. It also does not explain why when he does say "Jesus, son of Damneus" was made High Priest, he does not mention that this was the unidentified "Jesus" mentioned earlier and that the executed James was his brother, since that relevant detail would be worth noting.
More importantly, neither Carrier nor Fitzgerald explain why an interpolator would "tack on" this reference to their Jesus. The motive behind the clumsy interpolations in Antiquities XVII.3.4 is clear: the idea that Jesus was the Messiah and that he rose from the dead was disputed by non-Christians, especially by Jews, so to have the Jewish historian Josephus apparently attest to these Christian claims turned this passage that simply mentions Jesus into a powerful rhetorical tool in defence of these Christian claims. But simply adding "who was called Messiah" to this other text supports no Christian claim at all. If anyone prior to the Nineteenth Century was arguing Jesus did not exist, then it would make sense that such an interpolation might be needed, but that is a purely modern phenomenon. So Fitzgerald's contrived argument is not only clumsy, it is also supposing something for which there was no motive at all. Then, yet again, there is the fact that Origen quotes this passage three separate times with the "who was called Messiah" element in it. This was in the mid-Third Century and long before Christians were in any position to be "tacking on" anything to copies of Josephus.
"Jesus" or Yeshua was one of the most common names for Jewish men of the time. Josephus was very careful to differentiate between different individuals with the same common first names, especially where he mentions two in the same passage. So it is far more likely that he calls one Jesus "who was called Messiah" and the other "son of Damneus" for precisely this reason. The clumsy idea that Fitzgerald proposes is highly awkward in all respects; except, of course, as an ad hoc way of making a clear reference to Jesus go away and leave his thesis intact.
In a typically brazen distortion, Fitzgerald's book tries to dismiss the idea that the mention of Jesus in Antiquities XVIII.3.4 - the testimonium - is at least partially original to Josephus as something that "wishful apologists try to argue", rather than the consensus opinion of objective scholars across the board. Though in his reply to my critique he is forced to admit that this is not some desperate position by "wishful apologists" and he says "O’Neill rightly notes that the majority of scholars accept the passage as at least partially authentic". Absolutely, though no-one reading his book would know that, given the distorted way he presents the arguments - something he does throughout his work, as has been noted above. But he tries to rescue his position with this:
... but what he fails to add (if he even realizes) is that the “Partially Authentic,†or Reconstuctionist camp is the largest camp simply because scholarly opinion is so divided over the extent of tampering; it is a very large tent with lots of room for disagreement - and there is ferocious disagreement.
Given the amount of study I've done on the subject, I'm naturally well aware of this - but he does love those weasely little parenthetical insinuations. The point is that this simply doesn't matter. How much of the passage is or isn't authentic is entirely beside the point: if any of it is an authentic mention of Jesus by Josephus, the Mythicist goose is well and truly cooked. And the fact remains that the consensus of scholarship by experts Jewish, Christian, atheist, agnostic or Calathumpian is that Josephus did mention Jesus here.
But when I make the common-sense observation that if you take out the most obvious interpolations (the "he was the Christ" and "appeared to them alive again" elements) it reads like what we'd expect from Josephus, Fitzgerald is back to lumping these esteemed scholars in with "apologists" once again, saying "O’Neill (repeats) a dreadfully tired old line from the Christian apologists he despises". Actually, I take this "line" from esteemed scholars I admire, such the late Geza Vermes, one of the greatest Jewish scholars of our time:
The Christian passages, those that cannot be ascribed to the Jew Josephus, are easily distinguishable .... Once the Christian supplements are removed, the original notice is reduced to the description of Jesus as "wise man" and "performer of paradoxical deeds", the epithet "Christ" attached to the name of Jesus; the crediting of the death sentence to Pilate; and the mention of the existence of the followers of Jesus at the time of the writing of the Testimonium in the 90s CE."(Geza Vermes, "Jesus in the Eyes of Josephus", Standpoint, Jan/Feb 2010)
I'm sure if the late Professor Vermes was still with us he would be mildly amused to hear some self-published polemicist has lumped him in with Christian apologists.
Then Fitzgerald goes to work dismissing "the apologists" (you know, leading scholars like Vermes, Ehrman, Feldman, Whealey - "apologists" like that) on the grounds that "there is no consensus on what is 'obviously interpolated'". Well, no there isn't. Some think the phrase "for he was a doer of wonderous works" is one of the Christian interpolations. Others note that the word used here - παράδοξα (paradoxa) - is used by Josephus twice elsewhere to describe the miracles of Elisha and so is a usage he may have made. Some think the reference to "the tribe of the Christians" is an addition, on the grounds that he usually uses the word φυλή (phulē) as an designation for an ethnic group. Others note he uses it more broadly elsewhere, to refer to the female gender or to a swarm of locusts, and so could be used by him to indicate a distinct group.
But there is a very clear consensus on the idea that "he was the Messiah" and "he appeared to them alive again on the third day" are obvious interpolations. A couple of other phrases possibly are also, but we can still remove these elements and be left with a relatively laudatory passage much like Josephus' reference to John the Baptist (Antiquities XVIII.5.2). Which is about what we'd expect from this writer, the only one of the time who had any interest in such figures.
Fitzgerald waxes emphatic about whether the passage contains distinctively Josephan language, stating baldly that "Josephan scholars Steve Mason and Ken Olson have both pointed out that the passage does not use Josephus’ characteristic language." It's interesting, by the way, that leading experts on Josephus who hold the view that Fitzgerald doesn't like get repeatedly smeared as "apologists", yet Ken Olson, who is a graduate student at Duke University working toward his doctorate, is referred to as a "Josephan scholar". It seems Fitzgerald just can't resist giving everying the maximum possible spin.
Olson has written some very good papers on the subject, though his conclusions are very much in the minority. But the esteemed Josephan scholar Steve Mason would be rather surprised to find himself being cited in an argument against the partial authenticity of the testimonium, since he definitely supports the consensus position. Mason does indeed note a couple of words in the passage which are unique or unusual (Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, pp169-170), but he then goes on to detail the solid reasons that most scholars accept partial authenticity, dismissing the more extreme view fairly curtly, stating:
To have created the testimonium out of whole cloth would be an act of unparalleled scribal audacity.
(Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, p. 171)
He then proceeds to note that, while there are a couple of words which are unusual, "much of the rest is perfectly normal". He follows this by detailing no less than six examples of distinctively Josephan language in the passage. So it is very strange that Fitzgerald tries to marshal Mason to support his claim that there isn't distinctively Josephan language in the passage, when the weight of Mason's arguments and examples goes the opposite way. It's almost as though he hasn't actually read Mason's book and is getting his information second or third hand; something Mythicists do quite a bit.
Pre-Eusebian References to Josephus’ Antiquities
Having failed to make one argument from silence work effectively, Fitzgerald’s response quickly attempts another one:
Perhaps the major giveaway is that this passage does not appear until the 4th century. For the first 300 years of its existence, there is no mention of the Testimonium anywhere. This couldn’t have been simply because no one happened to read it; Josephus’ histories were immensely popular and pored over by scholars.
Citing Michael Hardwick’s Josephus as an Historical Source in Patristic Literature through Eusebius he notes that “more than a dozen early Christian writers …. are known to have read and commented on the works of Josephus†and questions why none of them mentioned the testimonium. That looks like a solid argument at first blush, until it’s realised it’s not “the works of Josephus†generally which are in scope here, but more specifically Antiquities alone; since that is where the testimonium is found. After all, it’s not like these writers had access to a nice modern Complete Collected Works of Flavius Josephus edition from Loeb Classical Library. Then we need to filter out the references to Antiquities which are derived via an intermediary rather from access to the work itself. Once this more precise focus is applied to Fitzgerald’s usual hyperbole, his “more than a dozen†quickly shrivels to perhaps just five. And even that is being extremely generous.
Filter things down to this relevant evidence and we are left with:
(i) Methodius, On the Resurrection, (II.18) – Methodius cites Josephus on the destruction of the Temple, though whether he’s referring to Antiquities or the Jewish War is unclear.
(ii) Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, (I.21) – Clement makes an argument about the antiquity of Jewish thought and gives calculations of the years back to Moses based mainly on the Jewish War, but which Hardwick and Whealey argue probably also contains elements from Antiquities.
(iii) Irenaean fragments XXXII.53 – This cites Josephus talking about Moses. Whealey thinks this is based on Antiquities Bk II, but it’s hard to see how Irenaeus could also have read the later books of Antiquities, given that he was under the impression Jesus had been crucified in the reign of Claudius, whereas Josephus specifically says in Bk XVIII that Pilate was removed during the reign of Tiberius. So he may have been basing this on a second hand reference or only had access to the earlier books of the work.
(iv) Anatolius of Alexandria, Pascal Canon, 3 – Writing on the dating of Passover, Anatolius makes a general reference to evidence from Josephus and Philo, though it’s hard to tell from it if he has actually read either or which Josephan work he’s referring to.
(v) Origen, Contra Celsus I.6, I.47, IV.11 and Commentary on Matthew X.17, all of which clearly reference Antiquities.
Of these, the only writer that gives us any definite indication of having actually read the relevant section of Antiquities is Origen. And Origen speaks twice of how Josephus “did not accept Jesus as Messiahâ€, which indicates that the version of Josephus he read did contain something like the reference to Jesus in Antiquities XVIII.9.1 before it had been added to (see below).
This touches a point that Mythicists always seem to miss when trying to use this argument from silence – if the original form of the testimonium simply said Jesus was “said to be the Messiah†and that he was crucified etc. where and why would early Christian writers need to reference this? It’s not like there were any Jesus Mythers in the second or third centuries they could use this passage against, so when and where would they need to use it? As a piece of testimony in the debates they were having – about Jesus’ status as Messiah, for example, or about him rising from the dead – the posited likely original form of the passage would have been entirely useless.
Indeed, the very elements in the textus receptus of the testimonium which the textual evidence indicates are later additions are precisely the ones which turn this passage into something useful in the debates of the time. Having a Jew declare Jesus to be the Messiah (as opposed to simply being called the Messiah) and to declare that he did appear alive again on the third day (as opposed to this simply being believed by others) transforms this unremarkable brief mention into a powerful argument against Jewish opponents. But if, as most scholars agree, these elements were later additions, the original would have contained nothing of much use to the (as the analysis above shows) very small number of Pre-Nicean Christian writers who had access to a copy of Bk XVIII of the Antiquities. In other words, the “silence†of this tiny number of writers is entirely explicable.
Pines, Whealey and the Testamonia of Agapius and Michael the Syrian
Fitzgerald then goes into some detail on why he ignored the highly pertinent textual evidence of additions and emendations to the testimonium provided by the variant versions found in Agapius and Michael the Syrian. These variants exhibit differences in the very elements in the textus receptus version which seem most likely to be later Christian additions to the Josephan text. But since Fitzgerald has held up Steve Mason as an authority, I'll give his summary of the significance of this evidence as a usefully succinct one:
(T)he existence of alternative versions of the testimonium has encouraged many scholars to think that Josephus must have written something close to what we find in them, which was later edited by Christian hands. If the laudatory version in Eusebius and our text of Josephus were the free creation of Christian scribes, who then created the more restrained versions found in Jerome, Agapius and Michael? The version of Agapius is especially noteworthy because it eliminates, though perhaps too neatly, all of the major difficulties in standard text of Josephus …. Agapius’ version of the testimonium sounds like something a Jewish observer of the late first century could have written about Jesus and his followers. (Mason, p. 172)
But, of course, if these variants indicate Josephus’ reference to Jesus was merely “edited by Christian hands†the Mythicist case is critically weakened. They need the whole passage to be "the free creation of Christian scribesâ€. This is why Fitzgerald crows that “several years ago historian Alice Whealey conclusively proved both these claims wrongâ€.
Like Creationists, many Mythicists use counter-arguments that have taken on an almost folkloric form – they haven’t actually read the scholarship on a given point themselves, but they have seen other Mythicists cite it and so they do so as well. So I’ve seen this “Alice Whealey has dismissed the idea that the textual variants indicate later Christian additions†idea invoked several times before. Each time it emerged that the Mythicist in question had not actually read Whealey’s dense and quite excellent paper on the question.
So, after a summary of Pines’ cautious arguments, Fitzgerald triumphantly declares:
Alice Whealey made her rather conclusive case (see Alice Whealey, “The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic,†New Testament Studies 54.4 (2008) pp. 573-90) that even the once-much-touted Arabic version of the Testimonium actually also derives from... you guessed it - Eusebius, by way of an intermediary Syriac version, and so long story short, neither of these medieval Arabic or Syriac texts came from Josephus. Which is why I didn’t include any of this wild goose chase in Nailed. Which, if O’Neill really kept up with Josephan studies as much as he’d like us all to think, he should have known all along...
Unfortunately for Fitagerald, I have indeed "kept up with" Josephan studies; which is why I am well aware of Whealey's article. This is also why I know that, far from somehow debunking the idea that the variant testamonia of Agapius and Michael point to an original, unedited version of Josephus' text, she actually supports and refines it.
Whealey's article is closely argued and complex and she argues persuasively that Schlomo Pines was on the right track when he pointed to the versions of the testimonium in Agapius and Michael as evidence that the mention of Jesus in Antiquities XVIII.3.4 was original to Josephus, but added to later by Christians. But she notes that since Pines wrote in 1971 there has been extensive work done on the relationship between Agapius' Arabic chronicle and the Syriac one by Michael and on their most likely common sources and their interrelations. Drawing on this more recent work, Whealey reassess Pines' analysis and draws some different conclusions.
Whealey disagrees with Pines that it's Agapius' version of the testimonium that most closely reflects what Josephus wrote and argues that it is actually Michael the Syrian's Syriac version that does so:
(I)n arguing that Michael's Testimonium, which is generally close to the textus receptus Testimonium and which has clearly been taken from a recension of the Syriac Historia Ecclesiastica, is more authentic than Agapius’ Testimonium, this study implies that the textus receptus Testimonium is much closer to the passage that Josephus originally wrote about Jesus than is often assumed. Indeed, the evidence of Michael the Syrian’s Testimonium, used in conjunction with the evidence of Jerome’s Testimonium, indicates that the only major alteration that has been made to Josephus’ original passage about Jesus is the alteration of the phrase ‘he was thought to be the Messiah’ to the textus receptus phrase ‘he was the Messiah’. (Whealey, p. 588)
So what Whealey actually argues is that both Agapius and Michael got their versions of the testimonium from a common source - probably James of Edessa - which in turn used "a recension of the Syriac Historia Ecclesiastica". And the pertinent point here, given Fitzgerald's erroneous "long story short" summary above, is that she argues this recension of the Syriac translation of Eusebius Historia read "thought to be the Messiah" rather than "he was the Messiah". She also notes Jerome's Latin translation of the testimonium has a very similar phrasing:
Since it is scarcely credible that the writers could have independently modified the Testimonium in this same way their readings must reflect an original Greek Testimonium reading something like 'he was believed to be the Christ'. Jerome's translation reading 'credebatur esse Christus' is highly significant because the earliest manuscripts of his De viris illustribus, the work in which his translation of the Testimonium appears, date to the sixth or seventh century; thus they are several centuries older than the earliest Greek manuscripts of Book 18 of Josephus’ Antiquities or of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica. (Whealey, p. 581)
Thus she concludes that both the Syriac version of Eusebius and Eusebius' original text both referred to Jesus as merely being "thought to be the Messiah", with Eusebius, like Josephus, being amended later. Jerome and the Syriac recension that lies behind Agapius and Michael therefore reflect both an unedited version of Eusebius and, ultimately, the original text of Josephus' testimonium. Interestingly, she also note that "because this reading is independently supported by Jerome’s very early translation of the Testimonium, .... it can readily explain Origen’s claim that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah." (p. 588).
There are possible counter-arguments to this, of course, as there always are with any such argument. But the issue here is how on earth Fitzgerald could have read all these references in Whealey's article to what "Josephus originally wrote about Jesus" (p. 588) and "Josephus' original text about Jesus" (p. 587) and yet try to use Whealey's article to argue against the idea that Josephus originally mentioned Jesus. And his "long story short" summary above shows clearly that he didn't understand what Whealey was saying about the implications of Jerome and the Syriac Historia's version of Eusebius at all. Again, it's almost as though he didn't even read Whealey's article and was just parroting some bungled Mythicist folklore about it. Or if he did read it, he clearly didn't understand it. Again, we see evidence of either crippling ideological bias or abject scholarly incompetence.
Josephus on the Execution of James
The second reference to Jesus in Josephus - the one in Antiquities XX.9.1 - is much more problematic for the Jesus Mythers, since here the scholarly consensus that it is genuine is overwhelming. Mythicists display a remarkable virtuosity when it comes to piling up suppositions to make this reference in Josephus' account of the deposition of the high priest Hanan ben Hanan go away. They try various tactics, but most fall back on yet another manifestation of their stand-by argument whenever things get difficult for them: interpolation. They argue that the passage is authentic, but the part where Josephus says the James he is discussing is the brother of a Jesus "who was called Messiah" is a Christian interpolation. Therefore, they claim, the Jesus in question is the "Jesus, son of Damneus" mentioned a few lines later and not Jesus of Nazareth.
Following his "mentor and hero" Carrier, Fitzgerald argues that "the James Reference is an accidental interpolation or scribal emendation and that that passage was never originally about Jesus Christ but Jesus ben Damneus (The Jesus who is actually mentioned in the passage, and fits the context!)" and he dismisses the references to it by Origen noted above by claiming that what Origen says about the James passage doesn't reflect what Josephus wrote and so can't be taken as evidence that the phrase "who was called Messiah" was in Josephus' text in the mid-third century AD.
Fitzgerald's treatment of this in his book seems to have been a truncated summary of an argument his mentor has since made in more detail in one of the few pieces of actual peer-reviewed scholarship he's had published - "Origen, Eusebius and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus Jewish Antiquities 20.200", Journal of Early Christian Studies, 20, 4, 2012, pp. 489-514. Unfortunately for Fitzgerald, his hero's argument has several critical flaws.
Like Fitzgerald, Carrier argues that Origen can't be used as evidence that Josephus' text originally included the key phrase "the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah" because, as he puts it "Josephus neither says, in AJ 20.200 or anywhere else, that James’s execution caused the fall of Jerusalem" (Carrier, p. 499). Having dismissed the idea that Origen was referring to Josephus on the grounds that Josephus doesn't actually blame the fall of Jerusalem on the death of James, Carrier then contrives an alternative explanation whereby Origen actually muddled Josephus with Hegesippus.
But a scholarly article is meant to address or at least acknowledge alternative arguments, preferably by dealing with them comprehensively, and there is a solid body of scholarship that deals with why Origen would say that Josephus "says" the fall of Jerusalem was punishment for the execution of James when Josephus clearly says no such thing. Both Wataru Mizugaki and Zvi Baras detail why Origen would claim this about Josephus is two separate papers in Josephus, Judaism and Christianity, ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (Wayne State University Press, 1987) - see W. Mizugaki, "Origen and Josephus" pp. 325-337 and Z. Baras, "The Testimonium Flavianum and the Martyrdom of James", pp. 338-348. As Mizugaki explains, Origen was not a historian looking at his sources with some form of objectivity. He was a Christian exegete, looking at them through the distorting lens of his religious convictions. So he tended to see his sources "say" things that aren't actually there.
Mizugaki gives several other examples of where Origen claims Josephus "says" things that he does not actually say and even one example where Origen alters Josephus' text to make it better fit the exegetical point he's trying to make (Mizugaki, p. 333). In Fragment 115 of Fragmenta in Lamentationes Origen discusses Lamentations 4:19 and claims "Josephus reports that even the mountains did not save those who were trying to escape". Except nowhere in any of Josephus' works does he "report" this at all - Origen is reading his Christian theology into his understanding of both Lamentations and Josephus. Mizugaki argues:
As we have noted, by citing and using Josephus to his own purpose, Origen interprets his historical account from his theological viewpoint and adapts it to his interpretation of the Bible. (Mizugaki, p. 333)
In the same way, the sequence of events following the execution of James could easily be read by an exegete to lead directly from the death of James to the fall of Jerusalem, even though Josephus in no way makes that link. Josephus details how Ananus' fall from his former position encouraged him to wield influence through bribery and currying favour with gifts thanks to wealth he gained from extortionate religious taxes (XX.9.2). This led to the sicarii rebels (the villains of Josephus' account of the Jewish War) targeting him via the kidnapping of his son, Eleazar, forcing Ananus to lean on Albinus to release captured sicarii in exchange for his son (XX.9.3).This was followed by Albinus trying to gain favour with the increasingly fractious priests by releasing even more sicarii rebels so that "the prisons were indeed emptied, but the country was filled with rebel bandits" (XX.9.5). He presents this sequence of events as the precursors of the procuratorship of Gessius Florus and as the background to the environment of political dispute, rebel banditry and Roman violence and oppression which triggered the rebellion that he had already detailed in his earlier work, the Jewish War.
Naturally we can see that Josephus isn't saying these things happened because of the execution of James and isn't connecting James to them in anything but an incidental way. But Origen didn't read his sources that way - he read them through the lenses of faith and "saw" connections and causes in this sequence of events where Josephus details how "as for the affairs of the Jews, they grew worse and worse continually" and how this sequence led to the fall of Jerusalem. For Origen the place of the execution of James in this sequence was not hoc post hoc but rather hoc propter hoc.
The idea that James' death was somehow cosmically linked to the fall of Jerusalem seems to have been around long before Origen and is also reflected in Hegesippus, who gives his account of James execution and then notes "And shortly after Titus besieged Judea , taking them captive". We find the same trope in Eusebius (though here obviously following Origen) and Jerome and it's also implied in some Gnostic traditions regarding James.
That Origen was reading this Christian trope into Josephus makes far more sense than Carrier's convoluted alternative and is based on Origen doing what he says he's doing - referring to Josephus. Carrier's alternative requires a string of contrived suppositions, which means Occam's Razor favours Mizugaki's far neater explanation. Strangely, neither the highly relevant papers by Mizugaki and Baras nor the prominent collection edited by Feldman and Hata in which they appear can be found anywhere in Carrier's footnotes.
This is because Josephus goes on to detail how his deposition didn't dampen Hanan's enthusiasm for intrigues and how he cultivated the favour of the new Roman procurator Albinus and that of the high priest "by making them presents" (Antiquities XX.9.2). The problem here is that the "high priest" that Hanan is currying favour with via "presents" is none other than Jesus, son of Damneus. This means, according to Carrier's reading, the very man whose brother Hanan had just executed and who had replaced him in the priesthood has, a couple of sentences later, become friends with his brother's killer because he was given some gifts. This clearly makes zero sense.
Carrier's contrived scenario requires a number of suppositions to be true for his removal of the key phrase to work and for his alternative reading to be correct. Amongst them is the requirement for Josephus to have originally referred to James by reference to his brother in one sentence and then to refer to Jesus son of Damneus by reference to their (supposed) father in the next. This is contrary to the very careful and consistent way Josephus introduces and differentiates between members of the same family thoughout his work - and yes, I've re-read the whole of Antiquties with this question in mind to check on this. However you cut it, Carrier's thesis does not stand up to Occam's Razor and, like all his work, it's an ad hoc way to get to an ideological objective: removing a key piece of evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus. Not that Carrier sees things that way. He is very impressed with his article - so much so that he gives it a ringing endorsement in its final paragraph:
The significance of this finding is manifold, but principally it removes this passage from the body of reliable evidence for the fate of Jesus’ family, the treatment of Christians in the first century, or Josephus’s attitude toward or knowledge of Christians. Likewise, future commentaries on the relevant texts of Origen and Josephus must take this finding into account, as must any treatments of the evidence for the historical Jesus. Most pressingly, all reference works that treat “James the brother of Jesus†must be emended to reflect this finding, particularly as this passage is the only evidence by which a date for this James’ death has been derived. (Carrier, p. 514)
In almost 30 years of reading scholarly articles from a range of fields I have never come across one that included such a fatuous, unprofessional, arrogant and patently immature pronouncement. When this ludicrous proclaimation was brought to Bart Ehrman's attention he commented wryly "No timidity there!". This pompous nonsense speaks volumes about Carrier's ludicrous narcissism. But that seems to be what performing for a peanut gallery of fawning acolytes like Fitzgerald will do for someone who once had a chance at a genuine academic career.
This is just one of a few mentions of Jesus outside of the Bible. I am not sure if the church ever has discussed things like that.
Personally I believe that it is very possible that there were also other things/texts that mention Jesus, but they were either lost or most likely destroyed.
One Came From the Heavens We Cherokees understand that it was Jiya Unega who gave our people the Sacred Fire that has been kept now for some 5,089 years. Jiya Unega gave the Fire as reminder of Creator’s presence with us, and he gave us the ceremonies with which to keep the Fire. Jiya Unega, Creator-Son, instructed us that as long as we keep this Fire, we will continue to survive as a people.
One last thought for now, why do atheists seem to believe that the Romans in a backwater province were such excellent record keepers, and that there is some vast, Indiana Jones-like storehouse containing documents describing all the events that were going on in 1st century Palestine?
It doesn't exist. It just doesn't. When it comes to real contemporaneous, not near-contemporaneous documents and histories from that era and place, we have the Biblical texts, Josephus....and that's about it.
On your argument, we write off all possibility of knowledge about 1st century Palestine.
So here's a homework assignment for you:
We have multiple individuals in 1st century Palestine who claimed to be Messiahs and attempted military insurrections against the Roman occupation, something Jesus never did. Surely, these Roman historians to which you refer will have documented these insurrections.
Give me some contemporaneous references in the prodigious Roman histories to which you refer, to the following individuals from ancient Palestine:
1) Athronges, who declared himself King of the Jews and inflicted a series of humiliating military defeats on the Romans in 4 BC before his eventual defeat.
2) The unnamed messianic Prophet of Gerizim, who led thousands of followers to Mt. Gerizim who had to be dispersed by Roman infantry and cavalry circa 36 AD.
3) Theudas, who claimed to be able to part the River Jordan and led a large group of his followers into the desert circa 46 AD before a military battle with Roman forces.
4) The unnamed Jewish Egyptian "prophet" who led his 30,000 followers to Jerusalem (before its destruction) in the early 1st century, with the promise that the walls would fall at his command and he would take control of the city. Roman military forces attacked and he ran away.
So, these were pretty significant events from the view of the Romans, right? Big military battles, threats to the Roman state. Far bigger events than the life of Jesus, from the Roman's perspective. There should be, like hundreds of references in these records you cite, if this period was so well recorded.
Let me know just, say, four references for each of these worthies. I'll wait here until you can look them up. Should be easy.
(Hint: You're only going to find those references from one historian. Guess who?)
Then we'll discuss why the references you claim to exist, don't. And why what you think is a forgery, clearly isn't.
I bump this to the top, as we are still waiting for those 4 Roman textual references for each of these 4 individuals from Cupper3.... Any day, now...
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Arizona Mike
I bump this to the top, as we are still waiting for those 4 Roman textual references for each of these 4 individuals from Cupper3.... Any day, now...
Nice try at deflection.
I asked the question first, rephrasing it does nothing for the credibility of proving a historicity of Jesus. You see, it is the Jesus of the bible, with all those supposed miracles, that would stick out.
The 147 words in Josephus are widely considered to be a forgery added afterwards. Regardless, there is no contemporaneous written record of the Jesus of the bible outside of the bible.
None. Or of any of the phantasmagorical happenings, you know, like all those zombies getting out of graves and walking around Jerusalem, "seen by many".
Because the bible cannot prove itself, that is a circular reference. The Book of Mormon cannot prove itself. Dyanetics cannot prove itself.
I do have to ask, though ... One person was the author of the Book of Mormon, and one guy wrote the Dyanetics books, right?
Whereas, the stories about Jesus included in the bible canon were written by 4 different authors, at different times. So, while we see the bible as one book now, it's not actually one book being asked to "prove itself", it's several accounts that are somewhat collaborative. And then there are the various gospels that weren't officially included in the bible canon, as well.
Granted, those books were all written by people who called themselves followers, so that does throw in a wrench.
I do have to ask, though ... One person was the author of the Book of Mormon, and one guy wrote the Dyanetics books, right?
Actually, one person was the translator of The Book of Mormon. Wordprint analyses strongly indicate that the original words were written by numerous different individuals.
But since this thread is about Catholicism, this is neither the time or the place for us to debate further on Mormonism. I just wanted to comment on that one statement.
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