Authenticity
[edit] Arguments against authenticity
[edit] Origen
The Christian author Origen wrote around the year 240. His writings predate both the earliest known manuscripts of the Testimonium and the earliest quotations of the Testimonium by other writers. In his surviving works Origen fails to mention the Testimonium Flavianum, even though he was clearly familiar with the Antiquities of the Jews, since he mentions the less significant reference by Josephus to Jesus as brother of James, which occurs later in Antiquities of the Jews (xx.9), and also other passages from Antiquities such as the passage about John the Baptist. Furthermore, Origen states that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ" [1] "he did not accept Jesus as Christ" [2], but the Testimonium declares Jesus to be Christ. Because of these arguments, some scholars believe that the version of Antiquities available to Origen did not mention Jesus at this point at all.[citation needed]
On the other hand, while this argument asserts that Josephus could not have written the Testimonium in its current form, it also demonstrates, according to some scholars, [attribution needed] that Josephus must have written something about Jesus, for otherwise Origen would have no reason to make the claim that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ." (While the claim that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ" can be based on the fact that he was by all accounts a traditional Jew, this fact would make his nonacceptance of Jesus go without saying; the fact that Origen said it at all suggests a context of Jesus existed in Josephus' work.) Presumably whatever he did write was sufficiently negative that Origen chose not to quote it.[citation needed]
However, there are other arguments as to why Origen would have said Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Christ and is it worth noting that no "sufficiently negative" Josephus quote has ever surfaced. It may have been Josephus’ silence on the matter as well as his Judaism that led to Origen’s comment.[citation needed] Or it could be Josephus's statement in Jewish War 6.5.4, where he declares that the Jewish messianic prophecies were really about the victorious emperor Vespasian that led him to believe Josephus did not accept anyone as a messiah. Since Origen makes no mention of negative comments by Josephus it can be argued that if Origen had read these comments he would have attempted to rebuke them and not chosen to ignore them in his writings.[citation needed] The fact that he did not do so gives credibility to the argument that no such writings existed at the time, but were a later interpolation.[citation needed]
[edit] Justin, and other early Christian writers
The Dialog With Trypho the Jew [3], written about a hundred years after the death of Jesus, is Justin the Philosopher's account of a dialog between himself and a Jewish rabbi named Trypho. In it two men debated about whether Jesus was the promised Messiah. Justin makes no mention of the Testimonium in his efforts to persuade the rabbi, even though: (1) Justin was a noteworthy scholar and was known to have pored over the works of Josephus,[citation needed] whose Antiquities had been written fewer than fifty years earlier; (2) the passage was directly relevant to their discussion; (3) the rabbi would certainly have been impressed by a relevant evidentiary citation from the greatest known Jewish historian.[citation needed]
Justin also fails to mention the passage in his Apologies. In fact, the absence of references to the Testimonium is consistent throughout the work of the Christian writers and apologists of the years 100-300 A.D. It is never mentioned by any author of those two centuries, Christian or otherwise. This passage is first quoted by Eusebius (ca. 315) in two places (Hist. Eccl., lib. i, c. xi; Demonst. Evang., lib. iii); but contextual analysis indicates that it seems to have been unknown to Justin the Philosopher (ca. 140), Clement of Alexandria (ca. 192), Tertullian (ca. 193), and Origen (ca. 230), although each of them was acquainted with the work of Josephus. [4]
[edit] Textual continuity
The interruption of the narrative by the Testimonium Flavium also suggests that it is an interpolation. In its context, passage 3.2 runs directly into passage 3.4, and thus the thread of continuity, of "sad calamities," is interrupted by this passage. The context, without the testimonium passage, reads:
3.2 So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition. 3.4 About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome.
However, the ragged structure of Antiquities involves frequent disruptions to the narrative, not least because it was mainly composed by a number of scribal assistants, and therefore this argument is not conclusive.[5]
[edit] Vocabulary
The passage 3.3 also fails a standard test for authenticity, in that it contains vocabulary not otherwise used by Josephus[6]
On the other hand, linguistic analysis has not proven conclusive when compared with other passages in Josephus which likewise exhibit unusual features.[citations needed]
[edit] Josephus's faith
It is argued that "He was [the] Christ" can only be read as a profession of faith. If so, this could not be right, as Josephus was not a Christian; he characterized his patron Emperor Vespasian as the foretold Messiah.
However, the supposed confession of Josephus relies on the standard text. But a recent study by Alice Whealey has argued that a variant Greek text of this sentence existed in the 4th century—"He was believed to be the Christ."[7] The standard text, then, has simply become corrupt by the loss of the main verb and a subsequent scribal "correction" of the prolative infinitive.[citation needed] In any event, the audience for the work was Roman, and Roman sources always write of "Christus", never of "Jesus", which could make this merely an identification.[citation needed]
[edit] Anachronisms
Some of the deepest concerns about the authenticity of the passage were succinctly expressed by John Dominic Crossan, in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant:[8] "The problem here is that Josephus' account is too good to be true, too confessional to be impartial, too Christian to be Jewish." Three passages stood out: "if it be lawful to call him a man … He was [the] Christ … 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." To some these seem directly to address Christological debates of the early 4th century. Consequently, some scholars regard at least these parts of the Testimonium as later interpolations.
[edit] Interpolations
The entire passage is also found in one manuscript of Josephus' earlier work, The Jewish War, in an Old Russian translation written c.1250.[9] Interestingly, the passage dealing with Jesus is not the only significant difference from the usual collations; Robert Eisler has suggested[10] that it was produced from one of Josephus's drafts (noting that the "Slavonic Version" has Josephus escaping his fellow Jews at Jotapata when "he counted the numbers [of the lot cast in the suicide pact] cunningly and so managed to deceive all the others", which is in striking contrast to the conventional version's account:
"Without hesitation each man in turn offered his throat for the next man to cut, in the belief that a moment later his commander would die too. Life was sweet, but not so sweet as death if Josephus died with them! But Josephus - shall we put it down to divine providence or just luck - was left with one other man....he used persuasion, they made a pact, and both remained alive."[11]
The passages in question give accounts of John the Baptist, Jesus's ministry (along with his death and resurrection), and the activities of the early church in which it resembles nothing so much as a faith healing movement; they are, however, bizarre in their inaccuracy and distortions of the matters. Lower criticism has concluded that this is an interpolation as other extant manuscripts do not contain it.
[edit] Alleged fabrication by Eusebius
Ken Olson has argued that the Testimonium was fabricated by Eusebius of Caesarea, who was the first author to quote it in his Demonstratio Evangelica.[12] Olson argues that the specific wording of the Testimonium is suspiciously closely related to the argument Eusebius makes in his Demonstratio, in particular that Jesus is a "wise man" and not a "wizard", as shown by the fact that his followers did not desert him even after he was crucified.
Olson's argument is supported by some scholars, such as Marshall Gauvin[13] and Earl Doherty[14]. According to Gauvin, "Had the passage been in the works of Josephus which they knew, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen and Clement of Alexandria would have been eager to hurl it at their Jewish opponents in their many controversies. But it did not exist." Furthermore, according to Gauvin, Eusebius had written in his Demonstratio Evangelica, (Book III, pg. 124), "Certainly the attestations I have already produced concerning our Savior may be sufficient. However, it may not be amiss, if, over and above, we make use of Josephus the Jew for a further witness."
One of the earliest ecclesiastical authorities to condemn the Testimonium Flavianum as a forgery was Bishop Warburton of Gloucester (circa 1770). He described it as "a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too".[15]
[edit] Arguments in favor of partial authenticity
For centuries Christian writers took the position that Josephus wrote the Testimonium more or less in its current form; until the 16th century, in fact.
Today almost no scholar holds that position: however, many writers claim that Josephus did write something about Jesus which has been corrupted in the surviving Greek text.
[edit] Arabic version
In 1971, professor Shlomo Pines published a translation of a different version of the Testimonium, quoted in an Arabic manuscript of the tenth century. The manuscript in question appears in the Book of the Title written by Agapius, a 10th-century Christian Arab and Melkite bishop of Hierapolis. Agapius appears to be quoting from memory, for even Josephus' title is an approximation:
For he says in the treatises that he has written in the governance of the Jews: "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders" - Shlomo Pines' translation, quoted by J. D. Crossan
Pines suggests that this may be a more accurate record of what Josephus wrote, lacking as it does the parts which have often been considered to have been added by Christian copyists. This would add weight to the argument that Josephus did write something about Jesus.
However, Pines' theory has not been widely accepted. The fact that even the title of Josephus's work is inaccurate suggests that Agapius is quoting from memory, which may explain the discrepancies with the Greek version. In addition, the claim that Pilate condemned Jesus to be crucified and to die has been interpreted as a reaction to the Muslim belief that Jesus did not really die on the cross. [1].
[edit] Syriac version
Pines also refers to the Syriac version cited by Michael the Syrian in his World Chronicle. It was left to Alice Whealey to point out that Michael's text in fact was identical with that of Jerome at the most contentious point ("He was the Christ" becoming "He was believed to be the Christ"), establishing the existence of a variant, since Latin and Syriac writers did not read each others' works in late antiquity.
[edit] Literary dependence on the Gospel of Luke
In 1995, G. J. Goldberg, using a digital database of ancient literature, identified a possible literary dependence between Josephus and the Gospel of Luke. He found number of coincidences in word choice and word order, though not in exact wording, between the entire Josephus passage on Jesus and a summary of the life of Jesus in Luke 24:19-21, 26-27, called the "Emmaus narrative":
And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. ... Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. [16]
From these coincidences in wording, Goldberg suggests that Josephus and Luke used a common source.
Goldberg points out that Josephus' phrases "if it be lawful to call him a man," "He was [the] Christ," "he appeared to them," and "And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day," have no parallel in Luke's passage, and takes this to support the position that the first two short phrases are Christian interpolations. Luke contains the phrases "but besides all this," four sentences on the women who witnessed the tomb, and "the Christ should suffer," which there is no counterpart in Josephus' text. [17]
For non-Christians, how did Jesus do it?
Originally Posted by Zaknafien
Bookmarks