Clement Read Hegesippus

[Secret Alias]

Come on. If James was stoned literally the moment before the Roman soldiers surrounded Jerusalem, who transmitted the information to Hegesippus? Complete nonsense.

[John2]

Come on. If James was stoned literally the moment before the Roman soldiers surrounded Jerusalem, who transmitted the information to Hegesippus? Complete nonsense.

The word in Greek is eutheos, regarding which Barrett writes:

Hegesippus may have used [eutheos] in the same loose way as Mark: 'and the next thing, that is, the next significant thing, was that Vespasian besieged them.

https://books.google.com/books?id=1MTWt ... tt&f=false

And as Hogeterp writes:

What eutheos (and euthus) is not is "immediately". Immediate means no middle, and eutheos describes a straight line, which could be more aptly put as "directly", but always includes a middle. What is apparent through a casual look through of the New Testament usages of this word is that Eutheos demands a middle, a time gap, the duration of which could be a few moments to hours, days, and even months or more!

https://books.google.com/books?id=e-m0A ... ly&f=false

[Secret Alias]

But even still. It's like the long section about what was going on in Jerusalem during the siege in Josephus. It's complete nonsense. How did Josephus know these details? I think much the same point is hinted at in Photius's description of Justus's 'counter-history.' Josephus couldn't have known what was going on in Jerusalem during the siege nor could Hegesippus. I don't understand your 'faith' in documents which clearly pretend to know things that the author couldn't have known.

[DCHindley]

... If James was stoned literally the moment before the Roman soldiers surrounded Jerusalem, who transmitted the information to Hegesippus?

However, it was immediately before Titus laid siege to Jerusalem that Simon bar Giora had his top general, Jacob (James) son of Sosas, arrested for attempting to surrender on terms to Titus, and he disappears from Josephus' narrative.

Now, assuming Jacob wasn't summarily executed after his arrest, like he had done to Ananus son of Ananus before throwing their bodies over the wall of the temple into the Kidron valley (gehenna), but was put on a Stalinesque show trial to feed Simon's ego, there would be transcripts.

The trial docs, as I see them, make fun of Jacob, saying that when Ananus' 2nd in command, a chief priest named Jesus, had questioned the trustworthyness of the Idumeans who answered the call of the Zealots, he was 100% right about them, and specifically Jacob son of Sosas, his closest and most trusted commander, who was about to sell him out. This was peppered by witticisms from the prosecuting lawyers that drew from Psalm 60:9 RSV ( = 59:11 in the Old Greek, or 60:11 in the Hebrew):

(LXA Psa 60:9) LXA Psalm 60:9 Who will lead me into the fortified city? who will guide me as far as Idumea?
(BGT Psa 59:11) BGT Psalm 59:11 τίς ἀπάξει με εἰς πόλιν περιοχῆς τίς ὁδηγήσει με ἕως τῆς Ιδουμαίας
(RSV Psa 60:9) RSV Psalm 60:9 Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?
(WTT Psa 60:11) WTT Psalm 60:11
mî yöbìlënî `îr mäcôr mî näHaºnî `ad-´édôm

It was Jacob son of Sosas who led (yöbìlënî) soldiers to take control of Jerusalem, the fortified city (mäcôr).

How did this get attributed to Jacob the brother of Jesus? After the Romans overran and occupied the city, they would have seized any official records they could lay hands upon that dealt with wealth and finance, just to see where everything lay hidden, but for transcripts like this, speculators may have acquired some to sell to the soldiers and camp followers as souvenirs.

While on his business travels from Asia Minor to Rome, Hegesippus comes across someone who had this document. He says "The guy who sold it to me sez it's supposed to be a transcript of the treason trial of the general named Jacob before Simon bar Giora himself, the king of the Jews." Hegesippus knows some Aramaic and translates it as best he could. He combines this with the story of Jacob and his encounter with Ananus and his 2nd in command Jesus, in War 4, plus the account of Jacob the brother of Jesus tried by the same Ananus in Ant 20.

What he regurgitates is a really crowd pleasing story of the early christian who led the Jerusalem congregation after Jesus' death, Jacob the actual brother of Jesus, who was unfairly judged and thrown from a high wall, then clubbed to death, after which Vespasian (well actually his son Titus) had the city captured, because Jacob the brother of Jesus was the fortification that had protected the city, leaving its capture by the Romans the inevitable result.

Only problem was ... Hegesippus called Jacob "Oblias," using a term from the trial transcript for Jacob son of Sosas, who led a force of Idumeans to take Jerusalem from Ananus' control. Yet he managed to misattribute the meaning of that word as strong defense, the word which underlays Herod's fortress Macharus.

As Psychoanalysts say: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

DCH