Hello David, it is stimulating to read your further thoughts. I can't go more deeply into this question. Just a few things:DCHindley wrote:Thanks ficino,
Sorry to be so late to respond. The process by which scholia were made to medieval codex mss may not apply to 1st century or two CE. According to David Trobisch the process of writing books in ancient Roman times involved vetting the drafts with friends before releasing a final version.
[text from DCH omitted for brevity]
1. I assume that you recognize that not all marginalia in codices can be considered scholia.
2. speculation about Josephus' having sent one or more drafts to friends for correction is interesting but of course remains speculation as concerns AJ 20. I had suggested a source switch as a possible explanation for the shift in tone toward Ananus in that book (others have suggested this before). Signs of haste such as this, even if there is not a source shift, don't add weight to a hypothesis of correction of AJ 20 by a friend of Josephus.
Point of interest: an alternative way of vetting a draft was to read it aloud before a circle of friends or students, as Isocrates had done centuries before with the Panathenaicus. But I don't see mileage, in any case, in speculation about Josephus' having vetted AJ 20 in a public reading.
3. as I said, I'm not a specialist in papyri. There are students' papyrus books surviving of authors commonly studied in schools - Homer et al. - and some of these have notes or other helpful insertions made by the student (cf. Raffaella Cribiore on this). But even with student copies, I do not know of questions written in margins.
4. at this point, I have trouble accepting the hypothesis that AJ 20.200 is what Josephus wrote, because the words λεγομένου Χριστοῡ come out of nowhere and cry out for some explanation. And as Carrier points out ("Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200," Journal of Early Christian Studies 20.4 [2012] 489-514), this account of the death of James does not square with other accounts of the martyrdom of James the Just. On the whole, Carrier's hypothesis seems more economical to me.
If I have further thoughts I will share them here.
Best, ficino