Josephus and Jesus (again)

[unkleE]

The last time I looked at the academic consensus on the Testimonium Flavianum, it was strongly but not completely in favour of partial authenticity - i.e. Josephus mentioned Jesus, but extra phrases were added (or altered). Reviews by Louis Feldman, James Paget and Peter Kirby all indicated that the majority of scholars (about two thirds) thought the Testimonium was partially authentic, about a quarter thought it was totally spurious, and a smaller number thought it was totally genuine. Those concluding it was partially authentic included Robert Van Voorst, Robert Funk, James Dunn, J Dominic Crossan, AN Wilson, John Meier, EP Sanders, Paula Fredrikson and Jewish scholars Geza Vermes, Louis Feldman, and Paul Winter, and many others.

But more work has been done in recent years, leading Richard Carrier to proclaim almost 2 years ago: "Let’s Just Admit It’s Fake Already". So I decided to update my understanding. Here is a summary:

• In 2005, Georgio Jossa supported partial authenticity.
• In 2007 (though not published until 2014) Casey Elledge cautiously accepted partial authenticity.
• In 2008, Alice Whealey argued that the TF was substantially genuine. Significant in her argument were Syriac and Arabic copies of the TF that supported the most common reconstructions of the text.
• In 2010, James Paget referenced arguments and scholars with opposing views, and seemed to cautiously favour partial authenticity.
• In 2011 Louis Feldman said that there was good evidence either way. He concluded that the TF “may well have” been interpolated.
• In 2013, Ken Olson put forward strong arguments for the TF to be totally interpolated, possibly by Eusebius, who quoted the TF and allegedly may have invented it (see also here).
• In 2014 Paul Hopper used a linguistic study to also argue against authenticity.
• Also in 2014, Fernando Bermejo-Rubio made his assessment: “I find most plausible the widespread view that an authentic core goes back to Josephus, although it has been partially interpolated.”
• Finally, in 2016, Alice Whealey reviewed all the evidence again, and again opted for almost complete authenticity.

It seems that most people accept that we have copies of the Antiquities and/or the TF from several different locations and sources, and they all include a reference to Jesus, but the exact text has many variations. This documentary evidence therefore suggests partial authenticity. But the claim of Olson and Hopper is that their linguistic analysis is more detailed, and it strongly suggests the whole TF is interpolated. However this linguistic analysis only has a small number of words to build on and not all agree that it is convincing. Many commentators find the text looks like a hybrid - a total fake or a totally genuine paragraph would look more homogeneous. So that is basically the two sides of the argument.

I haven't seen any competent, recognised scholars comment on Olson's and Hopper's work (although the Jesus blog with Anthony Le Donne, Chris Keith and the gang did give Olson a guest blog post to put his case, perhaps suggesting they have some sympathy with it).

Has anyone seen any other recent studies or papers, and especially any useful comment on Olson and Hopper?

[timoneill]

Do you have a copy of Hopper's paper that I can read? As you say, the problem with using linguistic analysis of the TF to argue for its total inauthenticity is that pretty much everyone agrees that some or even most of the passage isn't Josephan. So showing that it has what is most likely inauthentic material doesn't really get you very far and sure as hell doesn't get you all the way to "wholesale interpolation".

[ignorantianescia]

It is in any case good to underline that Hopper's qualifications are in linguistics (apparently focusing on topics like Proto-Indo-European and the relation between content words and function words), not in history or textual criticism.

[unkleE]

Tim,

I got a copy directly from Paul Hopper via ResearchGate, and he went to a bit of trouble to get it to me, which was very nice. I have emailed a copy to you. It's 2.8Mb (dunno why that big, but I didn't know how to reduce it) so I hope your email Inbox can handle that. If not, I'll find a way to reduce it.

[timoneill]

Feb 13, 2017 21:42:56 GMT unkleE said:

Tim,

I got a copy directly from Paul Hopper via ResearchGate, and he went to a bit of trouble to get it to me, which was very nice. I have emailed a copy to you. It's 2.8Mb (dunno why that big, but I didn't know how to reduce it) so I hope your email Inbox can handle that. If not, I'll find a way to reduce it.

Thanks - I'll look out for it, though no sign of it yet. In the meantime, Carrier's latest topic for his occasional talks is on how the consensus on the TF has changed in the last few years. Which seems to be his way of saying "a couple of papers I agree with have argued for total inauthenticity and I WANT this to mean the consensus is changing, so I'll just insist it has changed in my talk, after all, it's not like any of the people who turn up to these things bother to check a single thing I say."

[unkleE]

In case anyone else wants to read it, I have put it on the web at home.exetel.com.au/h2bh/Hopper.pdf.

Feb 14, 2017 3:47:05 GMT timoneill said:

In the meantime, Carrier's latest topic for his occasional talks is on how the consensus on the TF has changed in the last few years. Which seems to be his way of saying "a couple of papers I agree with have argued for total inauthenticity and I WANT this to mean the consensus is changing, so I'll just insist it has changed in my talk, after all, it's not like any of the people who turn up to these things bother to check a single thing I say."

Yes, I agree. I don't read much by Carrier, but it seems clear why he hasn't got an academic position. Most academics at least show respect for people they disagree with, and recognise that others legitimately have different opinions. He seems to have such an enlarged opinion of his own opinions that he thinks if he pronounces, that's the end of it. He may be right this time, but it seems to me it will take a few years for other historians to form a judgment on that.

[ydoethur]

Feb 15, 2017 21:45:37 GMT unkleE said:

I don't read much by Carrier, but it seems clear why he hasn't got an academic position. Most academics at least show respect for people they disagree with, and recognise that others legitimately have different opinions. He seems to have such an enlarged opinion of his own opinions that he thinks if he pronounces, that's the end of it. He may be right this time, but it seems to me it will take a few years for other historians to form a judgment on that.

I think the quality of his work is probably less of an issue than the fact that there was hardly any of it. Until the publication of On the Historicity of Jesus, he had published one article. That was it, as self-published work and blogposts showcasing his ignorance of physics do not count. To put it in context, to get a very junior academic post after a doctorate you normally need two articles and a book contract. Only now has he got that far. To get a longer term position you're looking at 3/4 articles, a book, a second book contract preferably with funding and a lot of teaching experience. Carrier still doesn't qualify under any of those headings. The fact that the quality is dismal - stating the blatant untruth that Irving is not a Holocaust denier in his first and for a long time, only article and writing a book where his subject knowledge was compared to that of a first year undergraduate - probably didn't help, but remember there are academics out there whose work is just as bad and still get posts (google Tristram Hunt if you don't believe me).

The whole point is moot now because with these allegations against him no insurer would cover him to work in a scholastic institution. So even if he were a latter day Ranke, he would still be stuck where he is.

[ignorantianescia]

There were many interesting aspects to Hopper's paper, but I don't think it is going to shift the consensus on partial authenticity. For instance, his analysis of aorists vs. imperfect forms vs. other verb forms (this is mainstream linguistics of Ancient Greek) strongly suggests that the topic of the TF isn't Jesus or Pilate, but the Christian community. And many of his points about genre and time use seem topical, but that doesn't account for the fact that the TF is a digression, while the other Pilate episodes are part of the plot of Josephus's story. It would also be odd for a creed to background Jesus and the TF lacks quite much of the content of a creed, so his suggestion of the creed as an alternative genre doesn't seem very strong. That all makes it less likely his opinion will carry the day.

It doesn't look like the probable and possible interpolated parts of the TF affected his analysis a lot. For instance, Jerome's version of the TF uses credebatur (ipf.) esse Christus for "he was believed to be the Messiah", which implies a Greek verbal phrase with an imperfect predicate and that wouldn't change anything from the textus receptus "he was the Messiah".

[unkleE]

I'm wondering whether Olson's work might be the more influential. Has anyone read anything about it?

[ignorantianescia]

I haven't read his paper, but I'm curious how any theory that Eusebius of all people forged the TF can withstand Whealey's 2008 article about the Syriac, Arabic and Latin translations. In that she presents very strong evidence that Eusebius's original read "he was believed to be the Messiah" instead of "he was the Messiah" and that the Greek textus receptus of the Historia Ecclesiastica was altered later along with Josephus's text. So then we'd have to believe that Eusebius would insert a whole, apologetically useless passage, mimicking Josephus's style well enough to fool the current consensus, despite the fact that he doesn't have a record of forgery.

[timoneill]

Feb 19, 2017 21:18:42 GMT ignorantianescia said:

I haven't read his paper, but I'm curious how any theory that Eusebius of all people forged the TF can withstand Whealey's 2008 article about the Syriac, Arabic and Latin translations. In that she presents very strong evidence that Eusebius's original read "he was believed to be the Messiah" instead of "he was the Messiah" and that the Greek textus receptus of the Historia Ecclesiastica was altered later along with Josephus's text. So then we'd have to believe that Eusebius would insert a whole, apologetically useless passage, mimicking Josephus's style well enough to fool the current consensus, despite the fact that he doesn't have a record of forgery.

Carrier disagrees!

"The End of the Arabic Testimonium"

"Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014"

[wraggy]

Image source: twitter.com/RCarrier_Errors

Can anyone confirm if this is an accurate quote of Ehrman and if it is in fact true?
If so, can anyone tell me who was the number one Jew attested to in the literature of the first C.E?

[evangelion]

Apr 28, 2017 2:45:11 GMT wraggy said:

Can anyone confirm if this is an accurate quote of Ehrman and if it is in fact true?

It is an accurate quote from Ehrman:

The first and most obvious point, to me, is this.

Jesus is one of the two best attested Jews living in Palestine in the entire first century. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews in some way connected with Palestine at the time.

Only one is better attested than Jesus (with a proviso, which I’ll explain). That one is the Jewish historian Josephus. The reason he is better known than Jesus is because he has left us a large number of writings – a twenty-volume history of the Jewish people, for example, a six-volume discussion of the Jewish War against Rome, and an auto-biography. Now *that’s* a lot of documentation for a person!

Jesus, so far as we know, didn’t write a thing, and so we have nothing like that from him. Or for any other Jew at the time and place.

But if you look simply at external documentation – that is, references to and discussions about a person by other sources – Jesus in fact is much better documented than Josephus. By an enormous margin.

(Source).

Is it true? It looks pretty solid. Jesus, Josephus, and Philo must be the best attested Jews of the 1st century period.

[wraggy]

Ah yes Evangelion, but I understand that there is no external documentation at all for Flavius Josephus.

He is probably a myth fabricated by Constantine or the Romans.






Or has that one already been done?

[evangelion]

Apr 28, 2017 5:43:08 GMT wraggy said:

Ah yes Evangelion, but I understand that there is no external documentation at all for Flavius Josephus.

He is probably a myth fabricated by Constantine or the Romans.


Or has that one already been done?

Atwill comes pretty close, but I'm pretty sure even he believes Josephus was a genuine historical figure.