Whealey's "Josephus on Jesus"

[DCHindley]

Hmmm,

Good point.

However, even scrolls have margins to separate columns of text, and the text from the top and bottom edges so as to avoid loss of text through wear such as cracks or flaked off bits. But I suppose that if one really wanted to make a point, s/he could write the notes between the lines. Isn't this, after all, how scribal glosses get inserted into the narrative by the next copyist? Between the line notes might seem like corrections.

DCH

If my "marginal notes" hypotheses has any merit, the copy with the marginal notes was NOT the one that became the exemplar, but it was seen by some Christians (copyists, whatever). Additions may have been made to the Christian copies on the basis of rumors (hearsay) about the copy with the marginal notes. Rumors get passed on and in the process changed until the story gets Hegesippus sized in proportion.

DCH

Hi David, as I said on your other thread, there may be mileage in a marginal "note" hypothesis, but I find a "question written in the margin" hypothesis a stretch, especially if we're dealing with a papyrus roll.

[Roger Pearse]

In Whealey’s book (Josephus on Jesus, 2003), she argued that Jerome was dependent on Eusebius for his version of the Testimonium:

The fact that De Viris is elsewhere heavily dependent on Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica would suggest that he simply copied the Testimonium he found in this work. Elsewhere, too, Jerome is known to have followed others’ citations of Josephus rather than checking Josephus first-hand. Moreover, as we shall see, the recensions of the Testimonium in later Semitic sources suggest independently of Jerome’s De Viris that there once were Greek copies of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica that read something like “he was believed to be the Christ.”

[2003, 30]

I had not remembered this - thank you.

I think it must be right to see the popularity and wide circulation (including into every language group of the east) of the HE as the key to understanding the text of the TF as it is found in all other works; and the normalisation of the text against that as the mechanism whereby they all come into harmony with it.

Note that the Syriac version of the HE is indeed very early, but it still displays traits that post-date the author. Eusebius composed summaries at the start of each book, but - as Schwartz showed in the GCS edition - did not place them in the body of the text as chapter titles. But I have examined the British Library copy of the Syriac HE (early 6th c.) and the "chapter titles" have already moved into the body of the text. I wasn't able to get a reply from St Petersburg, for the 5th c. ms.

All this may be - probably is - down to the general change in technology that took place (roll -> codex) in the late 4th c., of course.

Her argument is that the agreement between Jerome in the Latin West and Michael of Antioch in the Syriac East in the reading “He was thought to be the Messiah” must reflect the original reading of Josephus' Antiquities and Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica (on which Michael’s source and Jerome both depended).

Based on the idea that after the 4th century there are no real contacts between the Latin and Syriac-speaking worlds. On the other hand Michael lived in the crusader states, and indeed had excellent relationships with the Latin clergy there (based on a shared and entirely rational fear that the Greeks were out to get them). It might be interesting to ask whether Michael shows awareness of medieval Latin sources in any of his (largely unpublished, iirc) works.

Jerome is writing at the end of the 4th century, NB, so this leaves little time for him to access a text which reads "he was believed to be" when the 411 Syriac ms reads "he was".

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[ficino]

Hmmm,

Good point.

However, even scrolls have margins to separate columns of text, and the text from the top and bottom edges so as to avoid loss of text through wear such as cracks or flaked off bits. But I suppose that if one really wanted to make a point, s/he could write the notes between the lines. Isn't this, after all, how scribal glosses get inserted into the narrative by the next copyist? Between the line notes might seem like corrections.

DCH

If my "marginal notes" hypotheses has any merit, the copy with the marginal notes was NOT the one that became the exemplar, but it was seen by some Christians (copyists, whatever). Additions may have been made to the Christian copies on the basis of rumors (hearsay) about the copy with the marginal notes. Rumors get passed on and in the process changed until the story gets Hegesippus sized in proportion.

DCH

Hi David, as I said on your other thread, there may be mileage in a marginal "note" hypothesis, but I find a "question written in the margin" hypothesis a stretch, especially if we're dealing with a papyrus roll.

People who work on scholia tend to say that before the age of the codex, commentary would be written in a volume separate from the volume that contained the text. In later centuries, the two would be combined in a codex with margins big enough to accommodate the commentary. E.g. the Aristophanic scholia.

But I understand that you're talking about a reader's question, not an extended commentary or series of scholia, and it doesn't matter whether the postulated question was written in the margin or between the lines. I'm fine with your hypothesis if you can show other instances where a reader wrote a question about the text in a roll. The key term is Question. In other words, one often finds explanations and solutions of problems written in the margin or between the lines, but you need to show that readers would write questions in those places. As I said in your thread dedicated to your hypothesis, I've worked on a lot of codices. I've seen even weird pictures drawn in the margins, obv. by students, but I can't think of a question about the text written in a codex by a reader. But there may be examples. Then, I think you'd need to show that this phenomenon is instanced in rolls, since your hypothesis presumes the reader's question was inserted before Origen.

I don't know whether you could simply postulate an erroneous marginal expansion/explanation and eliminate the reader's interrogative insertion from your scenario. But then, would you need to distinguish your hypothesis from that of others?

Best wishes, and again, thanks for thinking through your postulated scenario, ficino

[ficino]

On the other hand Michael lived in the crusader states, and indeed had excellent relationships with the Latin clergy there (based on a shared and entirely rational fear that the Greeks were out to get them). It might be interesting to ask whether Michael shows awareness of medieval Latin sources in any of his (largely unpublished, iirc) works.

Jerome is writing at the end of the 4th century, NB, so this leaves little time for him to access a text which reads "he was believed to be" when the 411 Syriac ms reads "he was".

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger, your suggestion that Michael the Syrian was influenced by Latin sources is very interesting, for it raises the possibility that "he was believed to be the Christ" in Michael's chronicle could have been the product of influence from Jerome rather than the reading of a Eusebius MS filtered to Michael via his Syriac sources. We can imagine Michael and the Latin patriarch chewing the fat about their memories of the TF, even if the Frank had not lugged a copy of Jerome from Europe.

Still, there is Agapius two centuries earlier rendering into Arabic what seems to be Eusebius' TF as " ... he was perhaps the Messiah ..." (tr. Pines). So we are led to suppose that this "dubitative qualification" of Jesus' messianic status (Whealey's phrase) stood in the Syriac of Theophilus of Edessa, Agapius' source - which also stands behind Michael. Theophilus in turn ultimately transmits Eusebius' TF. Doesn't the agreement of Agapius and Jerome in "dubitative qualification," then, constitute fairly good evidence that the wording "he was believed to be the Messiah" or the like did stand in Eusebius? I.e. we don't need to speculate about influences from Latin upon Michael.

Obviously, we are still left with the problem, if Eusebius wrote "he was believed" (I don't even touch Josephus right now), why was that reading changed to "he was" in so many parts of the tradition of Eusebius, and so early? In addition to the Greek, it's also in Wright and McLean's edition of the Syriac translation of Eusebius' HE, which rests on one MS. dated 462, one saec. VI, and a florilegium of s. VIII or IX. I think it's in the Latin, too, though I haven't gotten my hands on Rufinus. I don't know about the Armenian and Coptic transl. of the HE. And there's the 411 MS. of the Theophania that Ken Olson pointed out above. Based on assumptions about Christian copyists, though, you'd think that "he was believed" is lectio difficilior.

I am not sure how much more time is worth devoting to this tangle of thickets, to be frank, but it's so dark that it's tempting to try to pick a path through it.

[ficino]

Adding: for Eusebius' role in transmitting the TF, perhaps it's a red herring whether he wrote 'this man was the Messiah' or 'this man was believed to be the Messiah.' After all, even Michael the Syrian, who has "was thought to be the Messiah," also transmits this from Eusebius: "He appeared to them alive after three days. For the prophets of God had spoken with regard to him of such marvelous things." Those sentences are also slightly shorter than but consistent with what we find in the Greek and Syriac of the HE. Eusebius is effectively presenting Jesus as Messiah. There are none of Whealey's "dubitative qualifications" in those sentences, and I see no textual markers that the doubt expressed in "was believed/thought" also operates on the statements that Jesus appeared alive after three days and that the prophets foretold him.

So I'm not convinced that Whealey succeeds in her attempt to support the Josephan authorship of the TF by her appeal to Michael of Syria and Jerome. Josephus might have written ἐνομίζετο, as Whealey conjectures, but I find it hard to endorse her belief that Josephus also wrote that "the divine prophets have spoken these [sc. that he would be condemned, crucified, and appear alive again to his disciples on the third day] and countless [myriad] other wondrous things about him."

[steve43]

Nothing else in Josephus suggests that he was remotely Christian. He was an aristocrat of priestly lineage and totally supported the High Priesthood (up to a point). And even when he felt that God abandoned the Jewish people, he did not turn to Christianity.

Josephus, in fact, was a part of the salon of Nero's wife Poppea for a short time in Rome in A.D. 63. He could have easily been one of those who downgraded and excoriated the Christian sect to Nero and the Royal elite- something that Nero might have remembered when he was looking for a scapegoat for the Roman fires of the following year, A.D 64.

source: Hagan "Fires of Rome"