Whealey's "Josephus on Jesus"

[Roger Pearse]

Here is a short excerpt from Carrier's paper:

"...Whealey has argued that the original Eusebian TF quotation read 'he was believed to be the Christ,' rather than 'he was the Christ,' and that somehow all subsequent manuscripts of the AJ, as well as all Eusebius manuscripts that contain the quotation, were emended to agree with the corruption. That all AJ manuscripts would so perfectly agree with a later corruption that somehow simultaneously ocurred in all the texts of Eusebius (a corruption that, by Whealey's argument, must have occurred after the 4th century) is rather improbable."

Carrier, R. (2012). Origen, Eusebius, and the accidental interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200. Journal of Early Christian Studies. pp. 493-494.

Thank you for this.

I don't recall that this is quite Whealey's argument. IIRC, she argued (this, in the paper; not in the book) that the text of Josephus himself originally read "He was believed to be the Christ"; that this reading is preserved by Jerome in "De viris illustribus" in Latin; that a manuscript of Josephus became corrupt at an early date and read "He was the Christ"; that this manuscript was used by Eusebius; and that, all the copies of Josephus were amended to reflect the Eusebian version.

This is an interesting theory. Eusebius was certainly a more common text than Josephus, and "correction" of less common texts to agree with the "most common" text is something we see even in the transmission of the Gospels. In fact we see it in the TF; because there is a Greek version of Jerome's DVI, in which the Greeks have "corrected" his version of the TF to be the same as the Eusebian one.

Carrier's objection is that this is not possible in a normal textual transmission. On what he bases this I don't know. It seems entirely plausible to me. It requires one only to know that most texts that survived existed in a handful of copies - often only 1 copy - by the 9th century.

It's an interesting argument, but Whealey did not repeat it in the book version, so I suspect that she changed her mind.

Important to note, there is no witness that is independent of Eusebius to attest to the alternate reading of TF favored by Whealey and other TF salvagers. Whealey makes the point that the all sources used to support that argument are derived from the Syriac Historia Ecclesiastica:

"...it is much more probable that these distinctive common elements simply reflect the nature of the literal translation of the Testimonium that was taken from the Syriac Historia Ecclesiastica by the common source that both Agapius and Michael followed, the former loosely and the later literally."

Whealey, A. (2008). The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic. New Testament Studies. p. 581.

The source of the witnesses to the so-called original TF are derived from Eusebius.

The Jerome text is not evidently based on Eusebius, surely? (Or is it? )

[Roger Pearse]

Hi Nili,

Could you offer two or three examples of Whealey's mental gymnastics, PJ?

Sure.

Twentieth century controversy over the Testimonium Flavianum can be distinguished from controversy over the text in the early modern period insofar as it seems generally more academic and less sectarian. While the challenge to the authenticity of the Testimonium in the early modern period was orchestrated almost entirely by Protestant scholars and while in the same period Jews outside the church uniformly denounced the text’s authenticity, the twentieth century controversies over the text have been marked by the presence of Jewish scholars for the first time as prominent participants on both sides of the question. In general, the attitudes of Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish and secular scholars towards the text have drawn closer together, with a greater tendency among scholars of all religious backgrounds to see the text as largely authentic. On the one hand this can be interpreted as the result of an increasing trend towards secularism, which is usually seen as product of modernity. On the other hand it can be interpreted as a sort of post-modern disillusionment with the verities of modern skepticism, and an attempt to recapture the sensibility of the ancient world, when it apparently was still possible for a first-century Jew to have written a text as favorable towards Jesus of Nazareth as the Testimonium Flavianum.

from Alice Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times, Peter Lang Publishing (2003). How the TF has been seen down the centuries.

She mentions the challenge to the authenticity of the Testimonium in the early modern period was orchestrated almost entirely by Protestant scholars" and "Jews outside the church" who "uniformly denounced the text's authenticity." Apparently she believes the Protestant Pope was orchestrating some kind of challenge to the Catholic Pope and he tricked the "Jews outside the church" into going along. In fact, it was just about every scholar outside the Catholic Church who found the text wanting. I read the subtext here as saying that there was some kind of conspiracy of Protestants and Jews against the Catholic Church. One could just as easily say that in early modern times the Catholic Church held to its dogmatic position that the Good Catholic Eusebius was not an historical forger, while everybody else who was somewhat disinterested and impartial saw the clear evidence that TF was a forgery.

wow you can read in a paranoid subtext that's not there. that tells us more about you than about her.

I think it's a misunderstanding for sure.

The point that Whealey is making is that the TF was pretty universally rejected, based on scholars following the work of Ussher in the 17th century.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[neilgodfrey]

Jeez, dunno how many times I gotta tear Whealey's thingy apart? Not again! Hell, it's shallow and makes too many assumptions, cannot see that Michael the Syrian and Agapius used the same source. She's rubbish.

Yeh. You should have a stoush with Tim O'Neill on this one.

[Ken Olson]

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]

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). The major modification in her position between her 2003 book and her later 2008 article has to do with the Syriac source behind Michael. At the time she wrote the book, she acknowledged she was not competent in Syriac (2003, 40) and did not discuss the original language, but speculated that Michael of Antioch probably had access to a Syriac translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica different from the known one. In the 2008 article she discusses the Syriac and acknowledges that Michael must be using the known Syriac translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica (earliest manuscript from the mid-fifth century).

This means that she’s claiming the change from “He was thought to be the Christ,’ to “He was the Christ” had to have been made in all of the Greek manuscripts of Josephus’ Antiquities, all the Greek manuscripts of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica, and then in all the Syriac manuscripts after the translation was made. Presumably, the change had to be made in all the manuscripts of the Demonstration and the Theophany (known only in Syriac, but in a dated MSS from 411, making it the earliest extant version of the TF), unless Eusebius himself gave different readings in different works.

Carrier is correct that there is a problem that Whealey’s theory must try to explain: by what means could the reading have been altered so effectively that the original does not survive in any manuscript of Josephus’ Antiquities, Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica (where the change was made to both the Greek and the Syriac versions), or Eusebius’ Demonstratio or Theophany. {And why was the new reading so effective in the Greek and Syriac East, but failed to make it into any manuscript of Jerome in the Latin West?}

Alice Whealey, Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times (New York: Peter Lang, 2003).

Alice Whealey, “The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic, “ New Testament Studies 54 (2008) 573-590.
http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/whealey2.pdf

[toejam]

^Do we have any idea roughly how many copies of Josephus' work would had been produced by the 4th Century? Are we talking a handful? tens? hundreds? thousands? I think the answer to that question would have a large baring on the significance of the problem Carrier is raising.

[Ken Olson]

We have no way of knowing, but there were probably very few. We know from Josephus himself that some manuscripts were distributed in his lifetime. Prior to Eusebius, Origen and Porphyry are the only writers who clearly show knowledge of the Antiquities (some might add Luke and possibly Irenaeus), and as Eusebius inherited Origen’s library at Caesarea through his mentor Pamphilus, he may well have been using the same copy as Origen. There is a boom in knowledge of Josephus after Eusebius.

To clarify, when I said “all the manuscripts,” what I really should have said was “the ancestors of all the surviving manuscripts.” We don’t know how many manuscripts there might have been containing readings that didn’t survive, we only know that they didn’t survive. The extant manuscripts of a given work reflect only those manuscripts that were copied and thus preserved for us. They are not a cross section of manuscripts that might have existed in antiquity. It’s quite plausible that all of our manuscripts of the Antiquities 11-20 are descended from a single fourth century exemplar. There are only 10 or 11 such manuscripts. Niese’s critical edition, on which modern work on Josephus is based, used three (from the 11th, 14th and 15th centuries), setting aside the others because they were copied from those three.

Because all the surviving manuscripts of a particular work may be descended from a single late exemplar, the fact that the change had to be introduced and become the dominant reading (i.e., the reading that got copied) in five different works (Josephus Antiquities, Eusebius HE in Greek, Eusebius HE in Syriac, and presumably Eusebius Demonstration and Theophany) is probably more significant than the number of manuscripts.

[steve43]

Josephus had the endorsement of Titus and Domitian. His books were placed in all the Royal libraries throughout the empire by Imperial order. Plus, with an endorsement like that. most private libraries had a copy as well, I would think.

[Ken Olson]

Josephus had the endorsement of Titus and Domitian. His books were placed in all the Royal libraries throughout the empire by Imperial order. Plus, with an endorsement like that. most private libraries had a copy as well, I would think.

Where did you hear that? You might want to re-check your source, particularly regarding the existence of “Royal libraries throughout the empire.”

Whealey did argue something vaguely similar in her book, contending that:

Given the history of Christians’ legal status and given the fact that Josephus’ works were until the time of Eusebius kept in the Roman public library to benefit a largely pagan readership, it can be safely assumed that Christians could not have tampered with official copies of Antiquities before 313 AD. Even an unofficial version of the Antiquities with an interpolated Testimonium for a Christian library would have been of limited use since uninterpolated copies would have been accessible to other Christians, to say nothing of pagans and Jews (Whealey 19, cf. 2, 13).

Her authority for this remarkable claim is Eusebius’ description of Josephus in HE 3.9.2:

He was by far the most famous Jew of that time, not only among his compatriots but also among the Romans, so that he was honored by the erection of a statue in Rome and the works completed by him were deemed worthy of the (a?) library (translation Cohen, 131).

Whealey construes Eusebius’ statement that Josephus was so esteemed among his contemporaries that his works were considered worthy of a library to imply that all of Josephus’ works were kept guarded in some sort of official archive in Rome up to Eusebius’ own time, though Eusebius does not say this. The theory that, because Josephus works were placed in a library sometime around the end of the first century, they must have been kept safe from Christian tampering and readily available to be fact-checked by interested pagan readers two hundred years later perhaps places too much confidence in the data storage and retrieval systems of ancient libraries.

Shaye Cohen has argued very plausibly that Eusebius’ statement is derived from Josephus’ own claim in his Vita that the emperor Titus had esteemed Josephus’ Jewish War so highly that he affixed his signature to it and ordered its publication (Vita 363). Placing a book in a library (βιβλιοθήκης) so that those who wished could make copies was a common form of publication (Cohen 131). But this would not imply that the book became part of some sort of permanent official Roman archive that would have been available one or two centuries later, and in any event the work in question was the Jewish War, not the Antiquities, which were not completed until the 13th year of the reign of Domitian, Titus’ successor (Ant. 20.267).

In De Viris Illustribus (which acknowledge use of Eusebius’ HE in the prologue) Jerome seems to have taken information from both Eusebius (e.g., the statue and the library) and Josephus’ Vita:

Josephus, the son of Matthias, a priest from Jerusalem, having been captured by Vespasian and his son Titus, was exiled. Coming to Rome at this point, he presented to the emperors, father and son, seven books On the Captivity of the Jews, which were deposited in the public library and, on account of his genius, he also merited a statue in Rome. He wrote also twenty books of Antiquities, from the beginning of the world until the fourteenth year of Domitian Caesar, and two of Antiquities against Apion, the grammarian of Alexandria who, under Caligula, was sent as legate on the part of the Gentiles against Philo, and wrote also a book containing a vituperation of the Jewish nation. (De Viris Illustribus 13).

According to Jerome, it is the seven books of Jewish War, called On the Captivity of the Jews here, which were placed in the library. Whealey’s claim that “official copies” of Josephus’ Antiquities were kept protected from Christian tampering in a Roman archive up to the time of Eusebius is a speculation that goes well beyond anything suggested in the sources available.

While Josephus claims his Jewish War was well respected by notables among both Jews and pagans in his own time (Vita 363, Contra Apionem 1.50-51), the evidence for the later circulation of his work in the next few centuries comes almost entirely from Christians. We have no references to Josephus’ works in later Jewish writers until the Middle Ages, in the correspondence of Bodo and Alvarus in the ninth century and the Hebrew Josippon, which according to David Flusser, the editor of the critical edition, was composed in the tenth century and based on Christian sources. The third century philosopher Porphyry is the only pagan author known to cite Josephus’ work, quoting his description of the Essenes (De Abstinentia 4.11). Suetonius in the early second century knows the story of Josephus the Jewish prisoner who foretold that his captor Vespasian would soon be emperor (Vespasian 6), and so does Cassius Dio in the third century (Roman History 65.1.4), but neither shows knowledge of Josephus as an author.

Cohen, Shaye, Josephus in Galilee and Rome (1979)
Whealey, Alice, Josephus on Jesus (2003)

[DCHindley]

^Do we have any idea roughly how many copies of Josephus' work would had been produced by the 4th Century? Are we talking a handful? tens? hundreds? thousands? I think the answer to that question would have a large baring on the significance of the problem Carrier is raising.

My understanding is that a writer may have many acquaintances he has brushed shoulders with who have an interest in his POV on certain issues (personal experiences, research into historical literature or oral traditions, science and/or astronomy, politics, philosophy, etc). That writer may want to put his POV into writing, and when he thinks it is sufficiently polished he will ask friends over to hear the work read, probably one book at any one reading. The listeners would offer their comments and constructive criticism, which the author would sometimes use to re-write certain parts.

After a while, word gets around that "So and So" has written a treatise on "this and that, which I hear (or I heard) was pretty interesting." Interested persons could request of the writer a copy, and the writer would either have a slave scribe create a fair copy of, or the interested person may dispatch a slave scribe to make the fair copy of, and off it went. These works would then be read aloud to special interest groups gathered for this purpose.

These treatises would be passed from interested party to interested party, probably not especially quickly because it take time to make a fair copy of a work in say 20 books, but in some cases quick enough to spread the work some distance from the place of composition. Something very like this was also at work with the Greek translations of Judean sacred literature. Persons or Synagogues were offering readings from them and a significant number of folks were attending the readings to become rather proficient in their knowledge of those books.

Even though Josephus seems to have made several editions of Antiquities (the later ones added his Autobiography and Against Apion), the number of copies of Mss of Josephus' works had to be small enough so that only one became the exemplar for all the ones that have survived. The exemplars of his works were probably owned by a Christian (Ken Olson named some possibilities) and copied primarily by (or only by) Christians.

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

[ficino]

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.