Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

MrMacSon wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote:
On that thread I just linked you to [viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2273&p=59273#p59273], Peter makes the point that maybe Eusebius invented a passage only once, and yes, that is certainly possible, but I have to admit, it still impresses me that, when we find him quoting (say) Irenaeus, and we can turn to the texts, lo, there it is, time after time. Any comments you might have on this topic would be most welcome.
Might I ask what point you're making there, Ben? ..That Eusebius generally quotes texts accurately? ..or, That Eusebius doctored texts attributed to previous writers (such as Irenaeus) so that when Eusebius is seen to be 'quoting' one of those previous writers, he is seen to be quoting them accurately?
My point is that Eusebius seems to quote accurately. I am not sure I buy the "Eusebius doctored everything" thesis.
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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Ben C. Smith wrote: My point is that Eusebius seems to quote accurately. I am not sure I buy the "Eusebius doctored everything" thesis.
Cheers. As you said, Peter makes the point that maybe Eusebius invented a passage only once.

I wonder if he created a few things, though. Such as his lists of Bishops of first century Rome and 1stt century Alexandria.

There is also the possibility that someone later than Eusebius 'aligned' things in texts attributed to Eusebius and in texts Eusebius says he got them from. But that is fairly far-fetched conspiracy theory-ish, at this stage.
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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MrMacSon wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote: My point is that Eusebius seems to quote accurately. I am not sure I buy the "Eusebius doctored everything" thesis.
Cheers. As you said, Peter makes the point that maybe Eusebius invented a passage only once.

I'm wonder if he created a few things, though. Such as his lists of Bishops of first century Rome and 1stt century Alexandria.
What about them (or anything else) leads you in that direction?
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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Ben C. Smith wrote:
MrMacSon wrote:
I wonder if he created a few things, though. Such as his lists of Bishops of first century Rome and 1stt century Alexandria.
  • What about them (or anything else) leads you in that direction?
in Historia ecclesiastica 4.5–6, Eusebius related that, until the Second Revolt, all bishops in Jerusalem had been of Hebrew descent:
  • "... until the siege of the Jews, during the time of Hadrian, there were in number fifteen successions of bishops, whom they say were all by origin Hebrews, and purely received the knowledge of Christ, with the result that they were also in fact deemed worthy of the service of bishops among those able to judge such matters. For at that time the whole church was composed by them of Hebrew believers, from the time of the apostles up until the siege they endured at that time, during which the Jews, having rebelled again against the Romans, were conquered after not a few battles." (Hist. eccl. 4.5.2)
Eusebius enumerated the names of fifteen Hebrew bishops from James, the brother of Jesus, to Judas, the fifteenth and last of this initial “dynasty” of Hebrew “bishops”. Scholars have often noted that in Eusebius’s writings the term “Hebrews” carries rather positive connotations, in contradistinction to the more polemically loaded label “Jews”.

Some have rightly questioned Eusebius’s simplistic portrayal of an immediate, smooth transition from a Jewish church to a Gentile one. Such a simplistic historiographical description of the change in the church of Jerusalem during the days of Hadrian seems rather mechanical and simply ignores the complex social reality left behind by an entirely uprooted community, a vacuum that certainly would have only gradually been filled (Irshai 1993, 1:25–26). Equally significant is Eusebius’s belief that, after the Second Revolt, the legitimate ethnic Jewish segment of the Christian church vanished: that is, those of Hebrew descent who had 'truly received the knowledge of Christ'.

References:

'Jewish Followers of Jesus and the Bar Kokhba Revolt: Re-examining the Christian Sources' by Isaac W. Oliver (aka de Oliveira)
  • published in 'The Psychological Dynamics of Revolution: Religious Revolts'. Vol. 1 of Winning Revolutions: The Psychology of Successful Revolts for Freedom, Fairness, and Rights. Edited by J. Harold Ellens. Pages 109–27. Publisher: ABC-CLIO Praeger, 2014.
Irshai, O. (1993). “Historical Aspects of the Christian-Jewish Polemic Concerning the Church of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century.”
  • PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem.


From the Catholic Encylopedia on Hegesippus:-

[Hegesippus] went on a journey to Corinth and Rome, in the course of which he met many bishops, and he heard from all the same doctrine. He [supposedly] says:
  • "And the Church of the Corinthians remained in the true word until Primus was bishop in Corinth; I made their acquaintance in my journey to Rome, and remained with the Corinthians many days, in which we were refreshed with the true word. And when I was in Rome, I made a succession up to Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. And in each succession, and in each city, all is according to the ordinances of the law and the Prophets and the Lord" (Eusebius, IV, 22).
Many attempts have been made to show that diadochen poiesamen, "I made for myself a succession," is not clear, and cannot mean, "I made for myself a list of the succession of the bishops of Rome." A conjectural emendation by Halloix and Savile, diatriben epoiesamen, is based on the version by Rufinus (permansi inibi), and has been accepted by Harnack, McGiffert, and Zahn. But the proposed reading makes nonsense: "And being in Rome, I made a stay there till Anicetus." When did he arrive? And what does "till Anicetus" mean? Eusebius cannot have read this, for he says that Hegesippus came to Rome under Anicetus and stayed until Eleutherus. The best scholars have accepted the manuscript text without difficulty, among others Lipsius, Lightfoot, Renan, Duchesne, Weizsaecker, Salmon, Caspari, Funk, Turner, Bardenhewer. In fact diadoche had then a technical meaning, which is precisely found in the next sentence, where "in each succession and in each city", may be paraphrased "in each list of bishops in every city", the argument being that of St. Irenæus (Adv. Haer., III, 3): "We are able to enumerate those who were made bishops in the Churches by the Apostles, and their successions up till our own time, and they have taught and known nothing resembling the wild dreams of these heretics." The addition of Soter and Eleutherus is intended by the writer to bring his original catalogue up to date.

With great ingenuity Lightfoot has found traces of this list in St. Epiphanius, Haer., XXVII, 6, where that saint of the fourth century carelessly says: Marcellina came to us lately and destroyed many, in the days of Anicetus, Bishop of Rome", and then refers to "the above catalogue", though he has given none. He is clearly quoting a writer who was at Rome in the time of Anicetus and made a list of popes beginning with St. Peter and St. Paul, martyred in the twelfth year of Nero. A list which has some curious agreements with Epiphanius, and extends only to Anicetus, is found in the poem of Pseudo-Tertullian against Marcion; the author has mistaken Marcellina for Marcion. The same list is at the base of the earlier part of the Liberian Catalogue, doubtless from Hippolytus (see under CLEMENT I). It seems fairly certain that the list of Hegesippus was also used by Irenaeus, Africanus, and Eusebius in forming their own. It should be said, however, that not only Harnack and Zahn, but Funk and Bardenhewer, have rejected Lightfoot's view, though on weak grounds. It is probable that Eusebius borrowed his list of the early bishops of Jerusalem from Hegesippus.*

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07194a.htm
* or Eusebius has 'put words in Hegesipuss's mouth'.

.
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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MrMacSon wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote:
MrMacSon wrote:
I wonder if he created a few things, though. Such as his lists of Bishops of first century Rome and 1stt century Alexandria.
  • What about them (or anything else) leads you in that direction?
in Historia ecclesiastica 4.5–6, Eusebius related that, until the Second Revolt, all bishops in Jerusalem had been of Hebrew descent:
  • "... until the siege of the Jews, during the time of Hadrian, there were in number fifteen successions of bishops, whom they say were all by origin Hebrews, and purely received the knowledge of Christ, with the result that they were also in fact deemed worthy of the service of bishops among those able to judge such matters. For at that time the whole church was composed by them of Hebrew believers, from the time of the apostles up until the siege they endured at that time, during which the Jews, having rebelled again against the Romans, were conquered after not a few battles." (Hist. eccl. 4.5.2)
Eusebius enumerated the names of fifteen Hebrew bishops from James, the brother of Jesus, to Judas, the fifteenth and last of this initial “dynasty” of Hebrew “bishops”. Scholars have often noted that in Eusebius’s writings the term “Hebrews” carries rather positive connotations, in contradistinction to the more polemically loaded label “Jews”.

Some have rightly questioned Eusebius’s simplistic portrayal of an immediate, smooth transition from a Jewish church to a Gentile one. Such a simplistic historiographical description of the change in the church of Jerusalem during the days of Hadrian seems rather mechanical and simply ignores the complex social reality left behind by an entirely uprooted community, a vacuum that certainly would have only gradually been filled (Irshai 1993, 1:25–26).
I agree completely that the picture Eusebius paints is often simplified, always biased, and perhaps even deeply flawed. That is not the same thing as invention, though, such as writing a piece of text wholesale and then attributing it to somebody else with deliberate deception. There is a distinction there that is very clear in my mind, though it may not be in other people's.
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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Ben C. Smith wrote: I agree completely that the picture Eusebius paints is often simplified, always biased, and perhaps even deeply flawed. That is not the same thing as invention, though, such as writing a piece of text wholesale and then attributing it to somebody else with deliberate deception...
Sure, but we are essentially considering varying shades of grey. One has to be suspicious when (i) there is little or no evidence that the somebody else that Eusebius attributes information (or texts) to ever had that information; and (ii) the information paints more of a rosy picture than any other contemporaneous or more timely information does.

We have Ken Olson's argument that Eusebius wrote the TF (subsequently backed by Hopper's argument the TF was written much later than Josephus's time).
  • I note your point that the TF "can still be a forgery without Eusebius having authored it" (I have previously raised Richard Carrier's point -made carelessly- that it could have been Pamphilius).
We have concerns about Licinius’ speech as recorded by Eusebius; raised by Olson & others:-

Eusebius. Life of Constantine. 1999. A. Cameron and S.G. Hall, eds. Oxford: p.232

Eusebius von Caesarea. De Vita Constantini. Über das Leben Konstantins. 2007. B Bleckman and H. Schneider. Fontes Christiani. Turnhout: - 43n240


As for the list of bishops in Rome:-

... the proposed reading [of Hegesippus by Eusebius] makes nonsense: "And being in Rome, I made a stay there till Anicetus." When did he arrive?

And what does "till Anicetus" mean? Eusebius cannot have read this, for he says that Hegesippus came to Rome under Anicetus and stayed until Eleutherus ...

..."in each succession and in each city", may be paraphrased "in each list of bishops in every city", the argument being that of St. Irenæus (Adv. Haer., III, 3):
  • "We are able to enumerate those who were made bishops in the Churches by the Apostles, and their successions up till our own time, and they have taught and known nothing resembling the wild dreams of these heretics."
The addition of Soter and Eleutherus is intended by the writer to bring his original catalogue 'up to date'.

With great ingenuity Lightfoot ..found traces of this list in St. Epiphanius, Haer., XXVII, 6, where that saint of the fourth century carelessly says: "Marcellina came to us lately and destroyed many, in the days of Anicetus, Bishop of Rome", and then refers to "the above catalogue", though he has given none. He is clearly quoting a writer who was at Rome in the time of Anicetus and made a list of popes beginning with St. Peter and St. Paul, martyred in the twelfth year of Nero. A list which has some curious agreements with Epiphanius, and extends only to Anicetus, is found in the poem of Pseudo-Tertullian against Marcion; the author has mistaken Marcellina for Marcion. The same list is at the base of the earlier part of the Liberian Catalogue, doubtless from Hippolytus (see under Clement I). It seems 'fairly certain' that the list of Hegesippus was also used by Irenaeus, Africanus, and Eusebius in forming their own. It should be said, however, that not only Harnack and Zahn, but Funk and Bardenhewer, have rejected Lightfoot's view, though on weak grounds. It is probable that Eusebius borrowed his list of the early bishops of Jerusalem from Hegesippus.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07194a.htm
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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MrMacSon wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote: I agree completely that the picture Eusebius paints is often simplified, always biased, and perhaps even deeply flawed. That is not the same thing as invention, though, such as writing a piece of text wholesale and then attributing it to somebody else with deliberate deception...
Sure, but we are essentially considering varying shades of grey.
Shades of gray is all that historians of early Christianity seem to have. Back to my point, though: I can see a clear, marked, bleedingly obvious difference between bias and fraud. Can you? If not, that is fine; it will just have to remain a matter of perception.
We have Ken Olson's argument that Eusebius wrote the TF (subsequently backed by Hopper's argument the TF was written much later than Josephus's time).
This is the very argument that I am questioning. It can hardly count in the "fraud" column just yet.
We have concerns about Licinius’ speech as recorded by Eusebius; raised by Olson & others:-
  • Cameron and Hall 1999:232; Bleckmann and Schneider 2007:43n240.
Yes, as I mentioned.
As for the list of bishops in Rome....
I have discussed Eusebius' quotation of Hegesippus on this matter before, and I find no evidence of fraudulent activity on his part. It seems like a real, honest-to-goodness error. I think this at least partly because he himself provides the text which exposes the error. If he was trying to deceive, then he did so incompetently. The better answer, obviously, is that he made a mistake in one book of his History but not in another.

(The part of your quote dealing with Epiphanius and Lightfoot does not seem to relate in any way other than that already discussed, so I have not commented on it.)
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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Ben,

I’m going to hold off for the moment on the question of Eusebius’s general reliability and its impact on the question of the authenticity of the Testimonium. Instead I’d like to ask you how you see the relationship between the Testimonium’s and Eusebius’s Christological conceptions and the language in which they are expressed.

I discussed this earlier here:
http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtop ... ard#p50303

To summarize, Eusebius sees Christ (AKA the Logos) as the mediator between a transcendent God and material creation. It was Christ that created the material world and since creation, it has been Christ who has appeared in human form to bring the truth or true religion (AKA the knowledge of the Father) concerning the one God to human beings, in ancient times to the pre-Mosaic Hebrew patriarchs, then to the remaining “Hebrews”, such as the prophets, who lived among the Jews. Finally, Christ appeared as the man Jesus to bring the truth to all the nations of humankind, not just the Jews.

I take the plural ταῦτά “these things” in the Testimonium’s claim that “the divine prophets having foretold these things and a myriad of other wonders about him” to refer to what’s said about Christ in the entire Testimonium rather than just referring to the resurrection that immediately proceeds it. So the Testimonium is saying that the man (if it is proper to call him such) Jesus was in fact the Christ foretold in divine prophecy who would be a maker of miraculous works and the teacher of those human beings willing to accept the truth, not only the Jews (among whom the Christ had taught the truth before) but also the Gentiles (who had not previously received it).

This sure looks like Eusebius’s Christology. While Eusebius has a number of different ways in which he expresses how it was foretold in prophecy that the Christ would work miracles and teach the true religion to human beings of all nations, some elements of the language used to express this in the Testimonium, particularly παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής and διδάσκαλος ἀνθρώπων is fairly distinctive; at least, they don’t appear elsewhere in Josephus works but do appear elsewhere in Eusebius’s statements about the Christ. I should emphasize that when I talk about language, I’m not just making a claim about word use or “style” (I don’t think I’ve used the word style in what I’ve published on the TF). I’m talking about the language as part of the overall conception of Christ being expressed (as described in the previous paragraph).

Most scholars who reconstruct the Testimonium, such as John Meier, rewrite the Testimonium to fit what they believe Josephus could have said. They don’t see providing an explanation of the relationship between the Testimonium and Eusebius’s Christological statements as part of the task. Whealey is an exception. She writes:
Since Eusebius used Josephus more extensively than any non-Biblical writer except Origen, and since he quoted the Testimonium three times in his works, it would be surprising if Josephus’ language had not generally influenced his own language in some way. In particular, the language of the Testimonium may have influenced how Eusebius described Jesus in his own works, or how he thought non-hostile Jews perceived Jesus. Thus any study of this topic may ultimately leave us with rather inconclusive results (Alice Whealey, "Josephus, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the Testimonium Flavianum ", p. 73-116, at 76, in & Böttrich Herzer (eds.), Josephus und das Neue Testament (Tubingen Mohr Siebeck, 2007).
Let me give some examples of the data to be explained:

Historia Ecclesiastica 1.2.23
He did and suffered the things which had been prophesied. For it had been foretold that one who was at the same time man and God should come and dwell in the world, should perform wonderful works, and should show himself a teacher to all nations of the piety of the Father
Demonstratio 3.6.27:
what does it mean, then, to suggest that the Teacher of true religion to
men,
Who worked such miracles in the period of His earthly life, and did the extraordinary
prodigies which I have lately described, was born actually endowed with (131) such power
Demonstratio 9.11 (comment on Deuteronomy 18.15.19)
IT must be noticed that no prophet like Moses has ever arisen among the Hebrews, who was a
lawgiver and a teacher of religion to men, except our Saviour, the Christ of God. Therefore at the
end of Deuteronomy it is said: "There has not arisen a prophet in Israel like unto Moses," though,
of course, many prophets succeeded him, but none were like him. And the promise of God
recognizes the whole future, that one only, and not many, should arise and be like him. And it
implies that he will be a lawgiver and a teacher of religion to men, such as none but our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ has been proved to be, being lawgiver and prophet of the God of the
Universe (444) His Father at the same time.
In these cases, has Eusebius read in the Testimonium that it was foretold in prophecy that Christ would παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής and a διδάσκαλος ἀνθρώπων and chosen to borrow the Testimonium’s language (which are somewhat peculiar in Greek and Josephus never uses elsewhere) to make these Christological points? A slightly different case is found in in the Demonstratio at the end of 3.3 to beginning of 3.4
But the above inquiry has had to do with Christ as if He only possessed ordinary human nature,
and has shewn forth His teaching as weighty and useful----let us proceed and examine its diviner
side.

WE must now proceed to review the number and character of the marvellous works He
performed
while living among men:
What’s happened here? Has Eusebius read in the Testimonium, which he quotes in near the end of 3.5 that it should be questioned if it is proper to call Jesus a man because he was a παραδόξων ἔργων ποιητής and decided to use that language to make the same point (that Jesus’s miracle-working shows he had more than an ordinary human nature) a chapter earlier?

So to re-formulate the question I asked at the beginning of the post: how do you account for the origin of Eusebius’s Christological statements which bear a striking resemblance to the Testimonium? Complete coincidence? Or has Eusebius derived his Christ-as-bringer-of-truth-to-men Christology from the Testimonium? Or has Eusebius has read the Testimonium in terms of his own Christology (which works surprisingly well) and then borrowed particular bits of the language to use himself? Since you allow the Testimonium may be entirely a Christian interpolation, the problem is not quite as severe for you as for Whealey who takes it to be genuinely Josephan. I still wonder, though, do you have an explanation for this that satisfies you?
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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Ken Olson wrote:Ben,

I’m going to hold off for the moment on the question of Eusebius’s general reliability and its impact on the question of the authenticity of the Testimonium. Instead I’d like to ask you how you see the relationship between the Testimonium’s and Eusebius’s Christological conceptions and the language in which they are expressed.
Thanks, Ken. I will give your points some thought and hopefully get back to you soon(ish) with specifics. Right now I am preparing to be away from my computer for a few days. In the meantime I will say that I consider your points to fall under two different categories, each with its own sets of likelihoods. First, there is the matter of how closely the Testimonium matches Eusebius' own Christology, and how likely (or not) it would be for that to happen if Eusebius himself is not the forger. This, to me, is the thornier of the two issues, the one to which my answer is not yet fully satisfactory. Second, there is the matter of whether Eusebius, if he found material (whether forged or not) in Josephus which was congenial to him, would pick up on that language and reuse it. To this my answer so far is: why not? It seems to me that he does this elsewhere, at least to some extent. He both reads and quotes Irenaeus, for example, talking about the episcopal succession (διαδοχή) from the apostles, and then he basically abstracts his entire History of the Church as τὰς τῶν ἱερῶν ἀποστόλων διαδοχὰς, and that concept, that language reappears all over his work. Is there something different about "worker of wonders" and "teacher of men" that would make them more or less likely to pick up on and reuse than "apostolic" or "episcopal succession"? (There may be, but I do not know what it is at this time, so my thinking is that his borrowing of these concepts is not all that strange.)

I have to admit that I also wonder whether I might be able to cheat a bit and peek forward to the end of the chapter: if I were to concede wholesale that your argument from Eusebian Christology makes him look like the forger, but then counter that the argument from his citation practices elsewhere makes it look like he would not do that sort of thing, would you be able to break the apparent tie between those conflicting notions?

A final thing I wonder, and have not checked: do those Eusebian/Josephan concepts and bits of language appear elsewhere in Christian antiquity? Do other Christian authors use the terms "worker of wonders" and "teacher of men", or something close to them? Your dismantling of my argument from Tacitus, Luke 24, and Josephus involved bringing in other authors with similar clusters of ideas, so I wonder whether your argument here might be susceptible to the same kind of procedure. Does that make sense?

Ben.
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Re: Is there a core text of the Testimonium Flavianum?

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Ben C. Smith wrote:
.. I can see a clear, marked, bleedingly obvious difference between bias and fraud. Can you? If not, that is fine; it will just have to remain a matter of perception.
I'm not sure bias is an appropriate descriptor; not on its own, at least. We are probably dealing with more than a dichotomy. And even bias and fraud are skewed.

I will address aspects of this further in my next post ...
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