Is the "Jesus, son of Ananus" story a Parody
Posted: Wed May 06, 2020 10:17 am
A thought experiment:
let's look at a text of Josephus Bellum Iudaica we encounter the character of Jesus, the son of Ananus in book 6, chapter 5, part 3(full text in Greek and English: http://www.biblical.ie/page.php?fl=josephus/War/JWG6#05) and come to a "reverse" conclusion.
Ted Weeden famously highlighted the parallels between Mark (the Synoptics) and this passage in Josephus, and that the passage itself is fictional, drawn from Jeremiah. (A chart somebody found here" https://imgur.com/a/PK5d5 .)
Weeden however makes a few assumptions in his analysis we should note. First is Markan priority, and the second is that Josephus made up the passage himself, and that it is original and authentic to War. Of these Markan priority is the least affecting, as the Synoptics are similar. The second one however is the one I flip on it's head. What if the version of War we have is later, say the base a second century revised version (from which Christian interpolations would later be added) released sometime after the Bar Kokhba revolt, due to revived interest in the subject. (This is not outlandish by any means, as almost all ancient literature, even up to Shakespeare is not the original version we have. George Lucas did similar meddling with his own Star Wars movies, reprising the versions such that it's hard to find an original release.) So the smoothness is not necessarily the result of Josephus' hand but his second publisher.
With that proposition in mind, we should consider that this Jesus, son of Ananus passage is an interpolation beginning at "Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἑορτὴν οὐ πολλαῖς ἡμέραις ὕστερον". This would reduce 6.5.3 to the same sized paragraph as those around it. And nothing before or after depends upon it. So it could work. Note, I take no exception to the concept that the passage derives from Jeremiah, nor any objection that the author was Jewish.
But this has a deeper implication, as it raises the possibility that it is an anti-Christian parody, an early dig at Christianity, not dissimilar in character from Toledot Yeshu, although more tame, something akin to Voltaire's tongue in cheek parody of Darwinism with the monkey lovers in Candide. Rather than the gospel writers borrowing the elements of the story from Josephus, our pseduo-Josephus borrowed elements of his story from the Christians.
Just a thought. Wondering if it occurred to anyone else as a possibility.
let's look at a text of Josephus Bellum Iudaica we encounter the character of Jesus, the son of Ananus in book 6, chapter 5, part 3(full text in Greek and English: http://www.biblical.ie/page.php?fl=josephus/War/JWG6#05) and come to a "reverse" conclusion.
Ted Weeden famously highlighted the parallels between Mark (the Synoptics) and this passage in Josephus, and that the passage itself is fictional, drawn from Jeremiah. (A chart somebody found here" https://imgur.com/a/PK5d5 .)
Weeden however makes a few assumptions in his analysis we should note. First is Markan priority, and the second is that Josephus made up the passage himself, and that it is original and authentic to War. Of these Markan priority is the least affecting, as the Synoptics are similar. The second one however is the one I flip on it's head. What if the version of War we have is later, say the base a second century revised version (from which Christian interpolations would later be added) released sometime after the Bar Kokhba revolt, due to revived interest in the subject. (This is not outlandish by any means, as almost all ancient literature, even up to Shakespeare is not the original version we have. George Lucas did similar meddling with his own Star Wars movies, reprising the versions such that it's hard to find an original release.) So the smoothness is not necessarily the result of Josephus' hand but his second publisher.
With that proposition in mind, we should consider that this Jesus, son of Ananus passage is an interpolation beginning at "Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἑορτὴν οὐ πολλαῖς ἡμέραις ὕστερον". This would reduce 6.5.3 to the same sized paragraph as those around it. And nothing before or after depends upon it. So it could work. Note, I take no exception to the concept that the passage derives from Jeremiah, nor any objection that the author was Jewish.
But this has a deeper implication, as it raises the possibility that it is an anti-Christian parody, an early dig at Christianity, not dissimilar in character from Toledot Yeshu, although more tame, something akin to Voltaire's tongue in cheek parody of Darwinism with the monkey lovers in Candide. Rather than the gospel writers borrowing the elements of the story from Josephus, our pseduo-Josephus borrowed elements of his story from the Christians.
Just a thought. Wondering if it occurred to anyone else as a possibility.