John2 privately pointed out that he was talking about EH 2.23.8, not EH 2.23.12-13.
Yeah, but ...
8) Now some of the seven sects, which existed among the people |
8) Τινες ουν των επτα αιρεσεων των εν τω λαω, |
and which have been mentioned by me in the memoirs, |
των προγεγραμμενων μοι εν τοις υπομνημασιν, |
asked him: What (is) the gate of Jesus? |
επυνθανοντο αυτου τις η θυρα του Ιησου, |
And he replied that it was the savior. |
και ελεγε τουτον ειναι τον σωτηρα. |
I think that what Eusebius quotes as the words of Hegesippus in EH 2.23.8 is not from H's five volumes of
Memoirs, as he refers to his
Memoirs as if a different work, one that enumerates all the sects of the Jews (Sadducees and Pharisees qualify). The account in EH 2.23.12-13 may be from his books of
Memoirs, but does not seem to mention a "savior."
Now it could also be a backwards reference to an earlier volume of a multi volume set of books, which are what his
Memoirs were, perhaps a volume that included a summarization of things recounted in the various volumes.
The only real difference is that He calls Jesus "the savior" rather than "the son of man." But in the "son of man" tradition found in the Gospels, Acts, Revelation and Hegesippus, Jesus was a divine being sent on a mission to save mankind (under conditions of course), and is, thus, a "savior." There is still no verb (not that it means anything other than being a common type of sentence fragment)
In my mind, the moral at stake is still that Jesus' elevated status as a savior - in consequence of his crucifixion by the authorities - allows him to one day arrive powerfully in the clouds to save the day for good people everywhere.
This is all fine and good, but only examines any door talk by the authorities as understood by a fully developed theological perspective of the time of the Gospels and later. I am leery of treating the Gospels, Acts, etc., as any earlier than 2nd century productions, as we have them anyways. Where such talk of "doors" as a class of moral to be associated with an infamous person comes from is hard to say, really. This story is set purportedly in the mid to late 1st century but before the Judean rebellion.
I'll confess that I am not aware of anyone ever using the term "door/gate" (
thura) for the moral of the story. The usual terms were
ēthikos (ethic principal) or
dikaios (example of good/bad conduct), but I am convinced it cannot mean anything but some type a "Moral" to Hegesippus. Maybe he encountered it in his source, whatever it was, and tried to fit it into his narrative, which was a travelogue peppered with amusing anectdotal tales of long past learned from those who he met along the way.
I have suggested <oh gawd, here it comes!> that Hegisippus, to add a little excitement to his boring travelogue, also collected this and that documents from bookstores and curio shops in the market places of towns he passes through. These were possibly documents stolen from a synagogue geniza, or as war souvenirs taken during the Judean war or the bar Kochba war and now was just something to sell for a few obals, maybe a drachma or two for a good one, and used the drama found in them as filler detail for his main stories.
If any were in Aramaic, which is entirely possible, Hegesippus had to make a rough translation from a language he or his family lost touch with when he/they moved to the big city as a slave/retainer of a wealthy patron. He made mistakes. I had proposed that he used a transcript of the mock trial of the Idumean James son of Sosa, who for a while had been Simon bar Giora's chief general but had fallen from grace, allegedly for a plot to depose Simon and hand over the city to the advancing Roman forces in exchange for clemency.
Josephus never says Simon's fate, but since Simon seemed to want to rub it in that one of those high priestly folks, a certain Jesus, second in command to the former HP Ananus, had said insulting things to the Idumean forces which had come to help the Zealot party, when Ananus had the city doors closed to them.
The Idumeans, of whom Jacob son of Sosas was a commander, were let into the city by stealthy Zealots, and they rounded as many members of the High Priestly families as they could catch, including Jesus, took them up to the top of the city walls where everyone could see, slaughtered or mortally wounded them as examples, then threw their victims over the wall into the valley below. It's all about examples intent to scare the common folks into submission. The moral to be taken was that a speech on the wall made by a Jesus when Ananus closed the city doors on Jacob's Idumeans was right about them Idumeans all along. They could not be trusted! The "Door of Jesus" was the popular label given in this propaganda document for the moral of the story it described.
So, an interesting piece of propaganda, probably found on the ground by a soldier who came in to relieve the original assailants of Jerusalem, after the defeated defenders' HQ buildings were found and the important documents carted off to the commander's tent for analysis by his intelligence staff, and handed down several generations just as our fathers and grandfathers handed down German Lugers/SS daggers and Japanese Arisaka rifles and flags, until one day they end up in a flea market. Assuming no one in the Roman command cared about the propaganda literature they found along with the important documents, they were likely just discarded.
DCH