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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Importance of Josephus?
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Komensky
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# 8675
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Posted
Josephus is relied on quite heavily in many quarters of Christian apologetics as evidence of non-Christian acknowledgment of the person of Jesus. The reliability of Josephus (at least the section that is so often quoted) has been under scrutiny for some time now. Both Christians and detractors use this passage as evidence of fraud or witness. My questions are these: Is the authenticity and accuracy of Josephus important? Why? Do we set ourselves and our audiences up for a fall by trying to emphasis the historical accuracy of early texts, only to later discover that they are/may be not entirely accurate?
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
There are still a few people who doubt that Christ ever existed. I think that, for them, the mention of Christ in a non-believer's account is important. Of course, most people think that the reference was edited to beef it up, which only serves to undermine the one slim value that Josephus has in this regard (would that zealots of every stripe would take that lesson to heart!)
For Christians, I don't think that Josephus' line or two about Jesus carries much weight. His commentary on contemporary events is useful as background material to the times (however questionable the source.) I really can't imagine what anyone would see in his rather flaccid and stilted retelling of OT accounts in his Antiquities, but I suppose any book ends up having some value if it gets old enough.
--Tom Clune
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
tclune wrote quote:
Of course, most people think that the reference was edited to beef it up, ...
Yes, that's a usual comment, though I do remember seeing a (literary) critique of that in turn, which went something like -
1. The critique is based on the text seeming improbably positive, given Josephus' stance elsewhere
2. But the original (?) text can be read in more than one way
3. and that another way would be that he is actually being rather negative.
Which would counter the redaction argument if true, though it wouldn't address the existence issue. I can't remember where I saw it though, but I'll continue to rack my brains.
[ 07. December 2012, 13:34: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
Do we set ourselves and our audiences up for a fall by trying to emphasis the historical accuracy of early texts, only to later discover that they are/may be not entirely accurate?
This argument could just as easily be applied to the Gospels. For better or worse, Christianity has made a big deal out of being based on historical events, so the accuracy with which those events are described is incredibly important to Christian credibility.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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angelfish
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# 8884
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Posted
I think it depends to what extent the texts are claimed to be "accurate". If we say that everything currently in the Bible is exactly as it was first written down, and the translation is entirely accurate, then we are probably heading for a fall. But that level of accuracy is not necessary to evidence the truth of the Christian's claims.
The texts we have suggest that a bunch of people were inspired to start a new religion at great personal cost. So you either think they believed it to be true (in which case you might try it for yourself and see if you also find it to be true), or that they made it up (in which case you need to explain why they made it up) or that none of them in fact existed and someone else made it up (in which case you need to explain why they did this, and how it ever got off the ground).
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"As God is my witness, I WILL kick Bishop Brennan up the arse!"
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angelfish
Shipmate
# 8884
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Posted
... As for the Josephus texts, there is such scant information in them, particularly information that scholars can agree is not interpolated, they do not offer much by way of corroboration and are very easily dismised as a result.
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"As God is my witness, I WILL kick Bishop Brennan up the arse!"
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
I think the fact that Roman Historian Josephus attested to a real person who fitted the description of the Jesus we read of in NT is important.
Nominal Christians, toe-dippers and those on the edge of the faith appear to be interested in this kind of testimony .
Ironically it is the Bible that can be the stumbling block . The reason IMO being that some of it, like the records of Josephus, come across as historical accounts . This , however, is so intermeshed with spiritual testimony that any attempt at rational discernment can, and does lead many into a fall.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Komensky
Shipmate
# 8675
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
I think the fact that Roman Historian Josephus attested to a real person who fitted the description of the Jesus we read of in NT is important.
Nominal Christians, toe-dippers and those on the edge of the faith appear to be interested in this kind of testimony .
Ironically it is the Bible that can be the stumbling block . The reason IMO being that some of it, like the records of Josephus, come across as historical accounts . This , however, is so intermeshed with spiritual testimony that any attempt at rational discernment can, and does lead many into a fall.
My understanding is this: a pretty heavy emphasis on Josephus is problematic. More than a handful of historians believe the blurb about Jesus is a later (4th c.?) addition. It does not appear in any of the earlier surviving Josephus texts (at least, not unaltered).
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
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Komensky
Shipmate
# 8675
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by angelfish:
... As for the Josephus texts, there is such scant information in them, particularly information that scholars can agree is not interpolated, they do not offer much by way of corroboration and are very easily dismised as a result.
Sorry Angelfish, I missed your post along similar lines.
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Komensky wrote: quote:
My understanding is this: a pretty heavy emphasis on Josephus is problematic. More than a handful of historians believe the blurb about Jesus is a later (4th c.?) addition. It does not appear in any of the earlier surviving Josephus texts (at least, not unaltered).
I take it you are referring to the part called the "Testimonium Flavianum" (TF) which indeed has varying opinions relating to interpolation.
But I was a bit surprised by your comment about earlier sources not having additions. My understanding was that the earliest manuscripts were 10th century Arabic and 11th century Greek. The earlier references are all in quotations of Josephus by other authors, and seem to be consistent broadly with the later manuscripts, but perhaps there has been a recent discovery I have missed (?) - can you point me in the direction of a reference to that one if so, please?
Josephus has other passing references to Jesus elsewhere outside the TF.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Komensky
Shipmate
# 8675
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Komensky wrote: quote:
My understanding is this: a pretty heavy emphasis on Josephus is problematic. More than a handful of historians believe the blurb about Jesus is a later (4th c.?) addition. It does not appear in any of the earlier surviving Josephus texts (at least, not unaltered).
I take it you are referring to the part called the "Testimonium Flavianum" (TF) which indeed has varying opinions relating to interpolation.
But I was a bit surprised by your comment about earlier sources not having additions. My understanding was that the earliest manuscripts were 10th century Arabic and 11th century Greek. The earlier references are all in quotations of Josephus by other authors, and seem to be consistent broadly with the later manuscripts, but perhaps there has been a recent discovery I have missed (?) - can you point me in the direction of a reference to that one if so, please?
Josephus has other passing references to Jesus elsewhere outside the TF.
Looks like I'd better do more review before saying much more.
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
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Net Spinster
Shipmate
# 16058
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Josephus has other passing references to Jesus elsewhere outside the TF.
I thought Josephus only had one other reference when detailing the death of James brother of Jesus called Christ.
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spinner of webs
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Net Spinster:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Josephus has other passing references to Jesus elsewhere outside the TF.
I thought Josephus only had one other reference when detailing the death of James brother of Jesus called Christ.
Sorry - badly worded. That is the other passage I meant and should have been in the singular.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
Looks like I'd better do more review before saying much more.
There's what seems to me a fairly fair and thorough account of the two Josephus passages here.
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
Reading some have that link has thrown some confusion on the matter as I always thought of Josephus as a non-partisan news recorder of his day.
These extracts sound more like a they came from a Christian convert . Therefore for making the Josephus records slightly akin to the Turin Shroud , valuable in one regard and suspect in another.
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Do you mean the bits where he attests to the resurection and says that Jesus was the Christ and suggests he was more than a man? Those bits are widely considered to be later Christian interpolations. If you read the whole article I think that will become clearer.
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
I'm not sure why the texts are questioned in this way. It seems to be a style of writing of that type of thing. Heredotus records story in that rather matter of fact way too, but it doesn't necessarily mean he believed it.
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Staretz Silouan
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
The oddity of thinking of the passage as entirely a Christian interpolation is that a lot of the material is not really the kind of thing that a Christian would first think of to say about Jesus. A Christian who would insert a whole paragraph claiming that Jesus was more than a man would surely not refer to Jesus as a man at all.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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roybart
Shipmate
# 17357
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Posted
Thank you so much, chesterbelloc, for that link.
I want to read the entire article more closely when I have more time. What is clear, however, is that in almost every case it is possible for scholars who know Josephus and his context -- and who know something of the habits of copyists/editors from a later, Christian period -- to distinguish with some confidence the elements of the text "ring true for Josephus" and those other words that definitely seem to have been interpolated later on by Christian commentators.
To take just the first example from the article:
quote:
b. A wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man,
Although the phrase "wise man" sounds positive, it almost certainly is not a Christian addition. That it is followed by the obvious interpolation "if it be lawful to call him a man" indicates that the interpolator found the description of Jesus as a "wise man" to be woefully inadequate. So, he remedies this insufficient estimate of Jesus by clarifying that there is good reason to doubt he was just a man. "A Christian scribe would not deny that Jesus was a wise man, but would feel that label insufficient for one who has believed to be God as well as man." (Meier, op. cit., page 60). Mason adds: "As it stands, the reticence to call Jesus a man seems like a rejoinder to the previous, already flattering statement that he was a wise man. It seems more like a qualification of an existing statement than part of a free creation." (Mason, op. cit., page 171; See also France, op. cit., page 30: "Thus the clause 'if indeed one should call him a man' makes good sense as a Christian response to Josephus' description of Jesus as (merely) a 'wise man', but is hardly the sort of language a Christian would have used if writing from scratch.").
Josephus' reference to the historical Jesus makes for a wonderful topic. (Thank you, rolyn, for introducing it.)
For me,the power of the Jesus narration (and the Jesus faith) is greatly enhanced by our knowledge that these events took place in the real world at a precise time and in a specific place. All the sources of information about Jesus combine elements that seem deeply, literally true, with other elements that seem more fanciful, or something seen in hindsight by a later generation of believers. We have a verifiable framework which each of us fills in with suppositions (inspired or imaginary) according to our religious tradition or our personal inclination. The wonder of modern Biblical scholarship is its willingness to investigate and analyze these matters. The results of this work seems are infinitely powerful, more faith-enhancing, than anything that the fundamentalists used to tell us.
I find myself imagining some 2nd- or 3rd-century Christian copyist starting to write the phrase "a wise man," being shocked by what that phrase omitted, and feeling (possibly inspired by the Holy Spirit? or not?): "But that's not enough! It's an insult to Our Lord." Or, if the copyist is an opportunist or toady, he might start thinking: "Oh Lord, the boss isn't going to like THAT. How can I pump it up a bit?"
Either way, this tiny bit of text is an artefact of a very long, complex, ongoing involvement of real human beings (as individuals, as churches, as "the church") in the Jesus narration. That for me is marvelous. It tends to support, not detract from, my own faith.
We learn two things from that paragraph: what Josephus says, and what some Christians later on thought he should have said.
I like Luke Johnson's brief account of what Josephus is telling us.:
quote:
Stripped of its obvious Christian accretion, the passage tells us a number of important things about Jesus, from the perspective of a first-century Jewish historian. ... Jesus was both a teacher and a wonderworker, that he got into trouble with some of the leaders of the Jews, that he was executed under the prefect Pontius Pilate, and that his followers continued to exist at the time of Josephus.
I guess it would be nice if Josephus, in his own words, had written "he was resurrected." But that wouldn't be Josephus.
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"The consolations of the imaginary are not imaginary consolations."
-- Roger Scruton
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The oddity of thinking of the passage as entirely a Christian interpolation is that a lot of the material is not really the kind of thing that a Christian would first think of to say about Jesus. A Christian who would insert a whole paragraph claiming that Jesus was more than a man would surely not refer to Jesus as a man at all.
I'm not suggesting that the whole passage is a Christian interpolation - quite the opoosite. As the link I posted makes clear, I think, bits of the paragraph are almost certainly Josephus - for precisely the reasons you mention. It's just the bits that explicitly attest to a belief that Jesus is the Christ and that he rose from the dead and was more than a mere man - those bits are almost certainly not by Josephus.
As to Herodotus, Fletcher C - where does he say equivalent things of Jesus?
[ 09. December 2012, 19:15: Message edited by: Chesterbelloc ]
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Actually, that wasn't meant to be a snark at Fletcher Christian - rather, a brain fart.
The fact is that Herodotus was in no position to say anything at all about Jesus since Herodotus died four centuries before Jesus was even born.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
He doesn't. But what I meant was that he tells stories in that same matter of fact way while it's not implicit that he believes it - more that he just thinks it a good yarn, or a way of saying 'Hey, look at what these folks believe'. The Dolphin at Delphi (or possibly some other place; memory doesn't serve too well as its been a while) seems a little like that. You can't really tell if he believes it or not because he tells it with such a straight face....so to speak.
*crosspost
[ 09. December 2012, 19:26: Message edited by: fletcher christian ]
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Sorry, Fletcher - misunderstood you.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
I'm not suggesting that the whole passage is a Christian interpolation - quite the opoosite.
Sorry - my remark wasn't aimed at anyone in particular.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
Given that Josephus wasn't even born when Jesus was apparently crucified, and wasn't writing until many, many years later, I'm struggling to see what his (claimed) opinion adds to the discussion.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
... I always thought of Josephus as a non-partisan news recorder of his day.
Non partisan? He fought in the civil war in Judea, then as an officer in the war against Rome, then switched sides and became a senior member of the Roman Emperor's household! He was as involved as you could be. The modern equivalent might be one of those old KGB men who defected to the British in the 1980s.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Komensky
Shipmate
# 8675
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Given that Josephus wasn't even born when Jesus was apparently crucified, and wasn't writing until many, many years later, I'm struggling to see what his (claimed) opinion adds to the discussion.
Me too. But apparently it's 'really important'.
K.
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Actually, I don't think it is wildly important. It is, however, interesting to see what people make of it, which can be a bit of an interesting spectator sport in all sorts of exciting directions.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quote:
Originally posted by Net Spinster:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Josephus has other passing references to Jesus elsewhere outside the TF.
I thought Josephus only had one other reference when detailing the death of James brother of Jesus called Christ.
Sorry - badly worded. That is the other passage I meant and should have been in the singular.
There was a third passage dealing with another New Testament character, John the Baptist, so there's another point of confirmation for the existence of another NT person.
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
My understanding was that the earliest manuscripts were 10th century Arabic and 11th century Greek. The earlier references are all in quotations of Josephus by other authors, and seem to be consistent broadly with the later manuscripts, but perhaps there has been a recent discovery I have missed (?) - can you point me in the direction of a reference to that one if so, please?
A 10th century Arabic manuscript of Josephus (not sure if it's the same one you're familiar with) surfaced in 1971 where the TF is translated as "he was believed to be the Christ" (bold bits not in the 'standard' version), which of course opens up the question of whether this was writing original to Josephus or a later gloss by Islamic scholars offended by the Christian man-god. And of course there's no rule that says a text can only be altered once, so this may be the result of multiple alterations at various times.
[ 10. December 2012, 15:07: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
That tallies with my understanding, Croesos, broadly speaking. The other point considering those descriptions of Jesus (the Christ, called the Christ) is that there are some twenty or so different Jesuses referenced, and that Josephus is probably using the descriptor as a cognomen, not any sort of explanation of what he believes about them.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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ProgenitorDope
Apprentice
# 16648
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Given that Josephus wasn't even born when Jesus was apparently crucified, and wasn't writing until many, many years later, I'm struggling to see what his (claimed) opinion adds to the discussion.
The reason that comes to my mind first is that some people really do seem to question if Jesus existed historically at all (saw a snide comment about that just on the BBC article about the women bishop vote). Josephus, being a non-Christian source, helps debunk that claim.
As was stated before, it's not really a historically valid claim, meaning that Josephus isn't THAT important. But its still nice to address things like that.
That's my take at least. *shrugs*
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Komensky
Shipmate
# 8675
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ProgenitorDope:
quote:
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Given that Josephus wasn't even born when Jesus was apparently crucified, and wasn't writing until many, many years later, I'm struggling to see what his (claimed) opinion adds to the discussion.
The reason that comes to my mind first is that some people really do seem to question if Jesus existed historically at all (saw a snide comment about that just on the BBC article about the women bishop vote). Josephus, being a non-Christian source, helps debunk that claim.
As was stated before, it's not really a historically valid claim, meaning that Josephus isn't THAT important. But its still nice to address things like that.
That's my take at least. *shrugs*
OK, so the 'crucial' bit that is so often quoted (in Alpha talks, for example) seems to be a later interpolation. It doesn't appear in the earliest versions (even though those do mention Jesus as an historical person [which I agree, is handy]. However, even that is the end of the first century. Again, it's still useful, but hardly a contemporary account. I certainly am not arguing that Josephus is useless, but it makes Christian apologetics pretty tough when these unreliable sources are trotted out at sliver bullets [mixed metaphors!].
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