Thoughts on this paragraph

O

Operacast

Well-Known Member
Messages
320
Reaction score
4
Points
18
I'm curious: What might be your takeaway from this paragraph? What kinds of implications do you find in what the writer says, and can you give a detailed paraphrase of what's written here, please?



"There are earlier references, but they aren't any good. They either just repeat what Christians were telling them -- Christians who were just riffing on the New Testament -- or they're actually fabricated by Christians themselves and the most famous example is a whole paragraph in the early Jewish historian, Josephus, which nearly everyone agrees was snuck into that book by a later Christian scribe, who was evidently annoyed that Josephus forgot to mention Jesus, so when he copied the book out he made sure to -- you know -- just add a paragraph. You generally don't have to add paragraphs to other people's history books for a guy who actually existed. Pretty much if you're inserting a guy into history who wasn't there before, usually that means he really wasn't there before. Now that leaves us just with the New Testament..."



Thank you,

Operacast
 
It's a reference to a sentence in "Antiquities" by Josephus, which makes a sudden and explicit reference to Jesus as the Christ, during a general preamble on issues within Judea.

I just checked the Wikipedia article, which makes the surprising claim that this is accepted as "authentic" by "most scholars".

However, last time I read on this issue, it was clearly a very contentious one, with the suggestion that it was clearly a later scribal insertion.

The problem of course, as the quote states, is that this is possibly the only reference to Jesus as a living person of the time - history is otherwise greatly silent on the matter.

Which of course can disturb Christians Apologists as obviously if you have a powerful god-man wandering a major urban area, but no one appears to think it worth noting. Unless there was no powerful god-man wandering around there in the first place, just a bunch of self-professed prophets, hence why nothing is mentioned.

I seem to recall there's a reference to Christians by Tacitus, writing in the late 1st century, but no mention of a living walking Jesus.
 
Namaste Operacast.

What the author is trying to say is 'Jesus never existed'. (that would be a three word summary)

That the mention by Josephus is fabricated, that there exists no record other than the gospels. Of course there are other records that weren't cannonized, but were also of much later origin. And then of course folks think if this trial and execution of the king of the jews was so important...there would be some official indication of same.
 
Time to let the other shoe drop on this OP.

A few of the mythers do get the distinction between the entirely human Jesus of Nazareth and the magic man called Christ. But they often pretend that it doesn't exist and that Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ are one and the same in order purely to confuse. Keep in mind that they are not real scholars in that they are out to frame the data around an a priori point of view rather than arrive at a point of view through examining all the data first. The latter is what an honest scholar does. The former is what a propagandist does and is what many a myther does. In fact, the former is very much like the judge in Alice In Wonderland, who announces "Verdict first, evidence afterwards".

It's time to let readers know what I was after in the OP.

I had cited the following remarks from an apparent myther I had encountered on the Web --

"There are earlier references, but they aren't any good. They either just repeat what Christians were telling them -- Christians who were just riffing on the New Testament -- or they're actually fabricated by Christians themselves and the most famous example is a whole paragraph in the early Jewish historian, Josephus, which nearly everybody agrees was snuck into that book by a later Christian scribe, who was evidently annoyed that Josephus forgot to mention Jesus, so when he copied the book out he made sure to -- you know -- just add a paragraph. You generally don't have to add paragraphs to other people's history books for a guy who actually existed. Pretty much if you're inserting a guy into history who wasn't there before, usually that means he really wasn't there before. Now that leaves us just with the New Testament..."

Please note what this lecturer is doing. He strongly implies that the extant text of Josephus's Antiquities only provides one mention of Jesus of Nazareth, not two! That is the plain implication in "a later Christian scribe, who was evidently annoyed that Josephus forgot to mention Jesus". Forgot to mention Jesus of Nazareth? Even if we take one of Josephus's TWO mentions of Jesus of Nazareth as interpolated -- the myther's favorite fall-back position -- this lecturer is still referencing only one of the two mentions as being scribally interpolated, not both. How sloppy -- or sneaky. This lecturer plainly references this meddling scribe only in connection with a "paragraph", which clearly points to the mention of Jesus of Nazareth in Antiquities 18 only, since the other one, in Antiquities 20, is a sentence, not a paragraph. The lecturer is strongly implying here that in the absence of his scribally interpolated mention in Antiquities 18, no further mention of Jesus of Nazareth exists in the extant text of Antiquities at all! How sloppy this lecturer is, at best, and at worst, what a bald-faced liar. What this lecturer strongly implies as a result is simply and manifestly wrong. There IS another mention of Jesus of Nazareth in Antiqs., and it's in the form of a sentence, not a paragraph, and it's in Antiq. 20, not Antiq. 18.

Now the mention in Antiq. 18 has already occasioned some general doubts among peer-reviewed surveys, due to certain turns of phrase that seem rather unlike Josephus. Josephus's other Jesus mention in Antiq. 20 has not occasioned the same kind of peer-reviewed doubts at all, and how suspiciously convenient that our lecturer here completely ignores this second mention entirely -- in fact, seems to imply that the second mention in Antiq. 20 doesn't even exist in the extant text of Antiqs. at all! How very, very, VERY convenient -- and seemingly deliberate -- for our lecturer to imply so strongly that the only Jesus mention in Josephus is the one -- in Antiq. 18 -- for which there are already some peer-reviewed doubts! To seem to pretend that the less questioned Antiq. 20 doesn't even exist is highly misleading at best. I wanted to see if anyone would spot that. No one here did.

Ironically, though, I did encounter privately one poster, a myther, who ended up doing something quite similar! So I called him on it. And he replied "The reference in Book 20 is so obviously an interpolation and certainly not about Jesus, I didn't even think of it." I have no reason to believe he's not being entirely candid here. Mythers like him and the lecturer I reference here have gotten so used to assuming that their bizarre opinions are fact that they sometimes don't think twice in coming out with their more absurd statements.

It's time to identify the lecturer I was referencing. It was Richard Carrier in a video'd lecture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX4LvKvIWJw. The remarks I quote come at 01:48 - 2:31.

Operacast
 
wil said:
If the one did not exist would the other be deemed specifically to be about Jesus? Or is it truly contrived?
Click to expand...

It is a straightforward reference to James, the next-in-line "heir" to the Davidite claim on the throne, as "the brother of Jesus, who had been called the Messiah".
 
this is all very interesting, peeps, but... I don't get it?

Today, I'm reading a book on Pure Land buddhism. The overarching concept of that school of buddhism doesn't resonate for me, as a buddhist, although I can see its appeal, for some,

yet...

even though I'm reading "their" commentary on a sutra I know well, and as far as I know, certain their version features sentences not in "my" version, I... accept that that's how it is. Things get added, and taken away, by each person translating, or copying texts. I accept that what I have in my hand is as flawed as that in my library at home, and both have merit.

With or without meddling scribes...

Why does it matter that a sentence seems to have changed, that there is little material speaking of Jesus at a certain period in history? I don't understand why it matters if he was real, or not real.

Or am I missing a trick?
 
No, Sam, you aren't missing anything. Take Julius Caesar, for example: now there we are on more solid ground, aren't we? We have his book "Gallic Wars" written by himself, don't we? Well, there is no manuscript older than the 10th century (a thousand years after he supposedly lived), and there are only seven independent medieval manuscripts (all texts derive from those seven), and they have discrepancies between them, of course. To which any historian will shrug, and say, "What were you expecting?"
 
You can't nail down a historical Jesus, Buddha, or Lao Tzu for that matter, so the real question becomes "what accounts for the veracity of the message?"

Chris
 
bob x said:
It is a straightforward reference to James, the next-in-line "heir" to the Davidite claim on the throne, as "the brother of Jesus, who had been called the Messiah".
Click to expand...

And however common the names of James and Jesus, we have, first of all, a tradition, however scanty, of

1. two brothers called James and Jesus;

2. James called up for a capital trial by the Temple priesthood;

3. Jesus acquiring the nickname of "Christ" by the great unwashed.

These are three distinct ingredients together as a unit.

How likely is it that the identical three ingredients can now be duplicated down to the last detail for an altogether different brother pair in Josephus' Antiqs. 20 whose characteristics and relationships just happen to be precisely the same?! Even if we remove the "Christ" nickname from one of the pairs and view "Christ" as an interpolation, that still leaves a double coincidence of two brother pairs of the same names, plus the James half just happening to be the half hauled up by the Temple priesthood for a capital trial.

The modern discipline of the most rigorous work on ancient history deals strictly with lesser and greater likelihoods, not with certainties. That's the mature way today to tackle ancient history. Once one is faced with a double or triple coincidence of this sort, the greater likelihood, particularly considering that we are dealing with the identical region and general period for both brother pairs, is that both the James/Jesus pair in Antiqs. and the James/Jesus pair in Mark and Galatians are one and the same.

Sure, one can speculate all one likes that there are two pairs like them, and one is fictional and the other is exclusive to Antiqs. and historical. But if one is going to gripe that contemporary references to Jesus of Nazareth outside the Bible are only half a dozen, then references to another James/Jesus brother pair outside of the James/Jesus pair in Mark and Galatians are but one! -- if, that is, one takes the pair in Antiqs. 20 as recalling some other pair at all. The uneducated guess that the James/Jesus pair in Antiqs. is somehow different from the pair found in Galatians and Mark stubs its toe against the principle of Occam's Razor.

This is why the reference to Jesus in Antiqs. 20 in tandem with a reference to a brother James makes logical sense as a reference to the historical entirely human Jesus of Nazareth, regardless of what may or may not be in Antiqs. 18.

Operacast
 
Operacast said:
How likely is it that the identical three ingredients can now be duplicated down to the last detail for an altogether different brother pair in Josephus' Antiqs. 20 whose characteristics and relationships just happen to be precisely the same?!
Click to expand...
Isn't that the definition of what brings one to question the authenticity?

Anytime in modern police forensics when you have two or three witnesses with the exact same story they are guaranteed to be a lie.

Take our four gospels....lets relay a time appropriate story...the visitation of the tomb....four gospels... describe the events in detail....none of them are the same....never the same number of angels or location or words spoken...guards there...guards gone...who went....
 
wil said:
Isn't that the definition of what brings one to question the authenticity?

Anytime in modern police forensics when you have two or three witnesses with the exact same story they are guaranteed to be a lie.
Click to expand...

Are you being serious here? The events referenced in the pertinent sentence in Antiq. 20 are not even addressed in Galatians or Mark. There is no analogy here to what you're describing at all. Instead, what emerges in Antiq. 20 are a different series of events in which James figures tangentially, a series of events much later than anything described in Galatians or Mark. That's what makes the sentence in Antiq. 20 such useful data for establishing both James and Jesus of Nazareth as normal and historical human beings. For one to suppose that there is some other James/Jesus brother pair also living in the same region, where, in addition, the James half also happened to get hauled up by the priestly authorities, and in addition to that(!), the Jesus half also happened to acquire the "Christ" soubriquet(!!), is to suppose a ridiculous series of coincidences that ultimately become absurd. Not to mention the fact that Josephus specifies at the end of the paragraph that he is switching his attention to a "Jesus son of Damneus" for the closing sentence, thus showing clearly that the Jesus he references earlier as an explicit brother of James is an altogether different person from this son of Damneus that mythers like to pounce on for reasons best left to psychiatrists.

Operacast
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top