Third new article on TF

[ficino]

Has anyone seen this? Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, “Gesù e il Tempio: le attestazioni di Flavio Giuseppe, Giovanni, Egesippo e Origene,” Maia 63.1 (2011) 107-44. According to L'Annee Philologique, she argues that stuff about connections betw Jesus and the Temple that isn’t in our mss. of Josephus could be read still in 2nd cent. by Origen and Hegesippus, as one can gather from Slavonic Josephus. Some gospel passages can be recognized in Josephus in other places.

I can't get Maia online but hope to check this out the next time I'm at the library. If anyone knows this article or knows Ramelli's work, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

From the summary in L'AP, her thesis sounds very hard to demonstrate as plausible. Lo vedremo.

[Stephan Huller]

If you can't get it any other way, I can email her. We are 'friends'

[ficino]

Cool! I was hoping to get to the library this week, but why not email her anyway? Then you'll have a copy, and you might beat me to reading and summarizing it for the group.

[Stephan Huller]

Sent her the email request just now. Waiting.

[ficino]

I'm reading Ramelli's article now. She cites her own earlier publications for her conclusion, which she restates here, that the TF is genuine except that λεγόμενος or νομιζόμενος "fell out" of the text, as you can tell from the reference to Χριστιανοί later on, where Jos says they got their name from their founder. So originally the TF read something like οὗτος ἦν ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός. The participle is confirmed by AJ 20.200, "which isn’t contested." She says Jerome must have used a Vorlage that had οὗτος ἦν ὁ λεγόμενος / νομιζόμενος Χριστός. Origen’s mss of Jos seem to have agreed with Jerome’s, since Origen says that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Christ. This suggests that in the second or third century there were copies of Jos in the form she postulates. This supported by Agapius, as she discussed in her 1998 article (cf. below). n. 5 she cites Whealey’s 2008 article w/ approval. She thinks the Greek redaction behind Jerome and what we find in the Syriac/Arabic went back to second cent. and was that known to Origen.

Her earlier papers, cited by her at beginning, include:
“Alcune osservazioni circa il Testimonium Flavianum,” Sileno 24 (1998) 219-35; “Un quindicennio di studi sulla prima diffusione dell’ annuncio cristiano,” in E. Innocenti and I. Ramelli, Gesù a Roma, Rome 2007.

The thrust of her argument is that Josephus' text existed in the second century in a form different from what we find today. Most of her present paper goes on to seek support for this conclusion from Slavonic Josephus and Hegesippus. She adds that Orosius says that Josephus dated the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Claudius to the ninth year of his principate, but that detail is absent from our text of Josephus.

She also has worked on the letter of Mara bar Sarapion (sic), which she takes as support for the historicity of Jesus.

As far as I've gotten in Ramelli's 2011 article, I find her work erudite. I wonder whether her approach to her sources is sufficiently critical. She doesn't seem to weigh the credibility of various sources very rigorously. But that's just my impression so far.

[Stephan Huller]

​Dear Stephan, 



I have no electronic offprints, but should have a couple of paper offprints at home. I am presently in the US ... but in December I will return to Europe shortly

With all my best wishes,

Ilaria

[ficino]

Two other initial impressions.

1. Are we to take Slavonic Josephus seriously as a historical source - or as evidence for an alternative form of the AJ in the period before Origen? I thought Slavonic Josephus is generally regarded as a later, Christianized reworking.

2. Ramelli's thesis is that the TF originally had οὗτος ἦν ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός. This word order struck me as not literary Greek. Indeed, a search of the TLG turns up only one parallel, which is scholarly not literary Greek, in the old scholion on Aristophanes' Lysistrata 808:
Τίμων ἦν τις: Τίμων οὗτος ἦν ὁ λεγόμενος
μισάνθρωπος, ὅν φησι Νεάνθης ἀπὸ ἀχράδος πεσόντα
χωλὸν γενέσθαι... (Τhe scholion is on the character, Timon, in a story told by the chorus: "There was a certain Timon..." The scholiast writes, "This Timon was the so-called misanthrope/the one called 'misanthrope', whom Neanthes says fell from a wild pear tree and became lame ...")

There is no instance of Ramelli's other suggestion, oὗτος ἦν ὁ νομιζόμενος Χριστός, paralleled in the TLG.

Her proposal also amounts to more than the "dropping out" ("la caduta") of the participle from the text, contra what she says. It requires shifting the position of oὗτος.

It seems less persuasive, and less close to Jerome's et credebatur esse Christus, than does Whealey's proposal of a passive finite verb like ἐνομίζετο.

-------------------------------------------------

Adding: p. 112 Ramelli refers to Josephus' descriptions of the inscriptions that told Gentiles not to enter the Holy place, i.e. second courtyard, of the Temple. Jos. says they were in Greek and in Latin: BJ 5.193-194, 6. 125. She says that Slavonic Josephus adds that they were also in "our" language, i.e. Hebrew or Aramaic. She compares this trilingual inscription to Pilate's INRI titulus on the Cross, which was trilingual. She says one can hypothesize that the phrase, "in our language/letters," fell out of the Greek textual tradition of Josephus but remained in the Slavonic. Here she suggests that the Slavonic goes back to the original semitic redaction, from which the Greek redaction was later made for a greco-roman readership.

This is important, she says, because the Slavonic goes on to say, corresponding to BJ 5.194, that "And above these inscriptions there was a fourth, in the same characters (as the other three), which proclaimed Jesus 'king who did not reign, crucified by the Jews since he preached the destruction of the city and the ruin of the Temple.'" (I translate Ramelli's Italian)

Ramelli goes on to say that the authenticity of this stuff from Slavonic Jos. is an even thornier problem than the authenticity of the TF.

OK... I judge hers an insufficiently critical approach for ancient history. I have other things to work on now.

[DCHindley]

Two other initial impressions.

1. Are we to take Slavonic Josephus seriously as a historical source - or as evidence for an alternative form of the AJ in the period before Origen? I thought Slavonic Josephus is generally regarded as a later, Christianized reworking.

2. ... Ramelli goes on to say that the authenticity of this stuff from Slavonic Jos. is an even thornier problem than the authenticity of the TF.

The Slavonic version of Josephus is, according to Leeming & Leeming's study,* not so much of a translation as a paraphrase. It was reconstructed, piece by piece, from a variety of other works into which parts of it were incorporated. The paraphraser may not have even been a Christian (Eastern Orthodox) although this appears to have been his "faith" as an elite, but still semi-pagan. He was aware of Judaic sources through the writings of the Khazars centered at Kiev. His primary interest was military strategy and tactics, so he left out sections of War that were irrelevant to his interests, and added details not in the Greek War (for example, that Josephus spread caltrops - devices similar to modern day "jacks"- on the trails to injure the hooves of Vespasian's cavalry).

The description of Jesus, usually just called the "wonder worker," is rather that of a revolutionary, as was his description of a figure that corresponds to John the Baptist. This led Robert Eisler to think it at very least contained language from a short Aramaic work Josephus said he wrote immediately after the capture of Jerusalem that described its capture by the Romans in all its gory details, copies of which the Romans salted throughout upper Mesopotamia to dissuade the Jews of that area from supporting the refugee rebels who were streaming into Parthia and its client states ("This could be you!"). Eisler wanted to believe that Jesus was a wandering Rechabite tinker similar to the "sleb" - who had a reputation much like gypsies did/do in Europe - in the middle east of his day. It's a little like the "insight" into ancient Mediterranean culture that Adolf Deissmann received while enjoying a steamship vacation in the area around the turn of the 20th century. Leeming & Leeming thought this proposal (about SJ being influenced by Josephus' Aramaic "Capture of Jerusalem") was unsupportable, but understood how something like that could be believed by scholars in the early 1900s given the state of scholarship at that time. If you ask me, Eisler and Deissmann were much like the Context Group or Kenneth Bailey are today, full of wishful thinking and romantic ideas about days of yore.

DCH

*Josephus’ Jewish War & Its Slavonic Version, H Leeming & K Leeming, eds, (2003)

[ficino]

Thanks, David, I may look at Leeming and Leeming.

[maryhelena]

Two other initial impressions.

1. Are we to take Slavonic Josephus seriously as a historical source - or as evidence for an alternative form of the AJ in the period before Origen? I thought Slavonic Josephus is generally regarded as a later, Christianized reworking.

2. ... Ramelli goes on to say that the authenticity of this stuff from Slavonic Jos. is an even thornier problem than the authenticity of the TF.

The Slavonic version of Josephus is, according to Leeming & Leeming's study,* not so much of a translation as a paraphrase. It was reconstructed, piece by piece, from a variety of other works into which parts of it were incorporated. The paraphraser may not have even been a Christian (Eastern Orthodox) although this appears to have been his "faith" as an elite, but still semi-pagan. He was aware of Judaic sources through the writings of the Khazars centered at Kiev. His primary interest was military strategy and tactics, so he left out sections of War that were irrelevant to his interests, and added details not in the Greek War (for example, that Josephus spread caltrops - devices similar to modern day "jacks"- on the trails to injure the hooves of Vespasian's cavalry).

The description of Jesus, usually just called the "wonder worker," is rather that of a revolutionary, as was his description of a figure that corresponds to John the Baptist. This led Robert Eisler to think it at very least contained language from a short Aramaic work Josephus said he wrote immediately after the capture of Jerusalem that described its capture by the Romans in all its gory details, copies of which the Romans salted throughout upper Mesopotamia to dissuade the Jews of that area from supporting the refugee rebels who were streaming into Parthia and its client states ("This could be you!"). Eisler wanted to believe that Jesus was a wandering Rechabite tinker similar to the "sleb" - who had a reputation much like gypsies did/do in Europe - in the middle east of his day. It's a little like the "insight" into ancient Mediterranean culture that Adolf Deissmann received while enjoying a steamship vacation in the area around the turn of the 20th century. Leeming & Leeming thought this proposal (about SJ being influenced by Josephus' Aramaic "Capture of Jerusalem") was unsupportable, but understood how something like that could be believed by scholars in the early 1900s given the state of scholarship at that time. If you ask me, Eisler and Deissmann were much like the Context Group or Kenneth Bailey are today, full of wishful thinking and romantic ideas about days of yore.

DCH

*Josephus’ Jewish War & Its Slavonic Version, H Leeming & K Leeming, eds, (2003)

Someone who has used the Leeming and Leeming translation as a basis for argument re historical Jesus is
Etienne Nodet: The Historical Jesus: Necessity and Limits of an Inquiry (Jewish & Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies)

This presentation on the Slavonic version, which has become more accessible thanks to the recent appearance of a new English translation, is intended to show its importance for a renewed understanding of certain aspects of the New Testament.

<snip>

However, Eisler’s work - which has an undeniable excess - was overall badly received, but for two distinct reasons: by Catholics, because it put in a bad light the exactness of the Gospels when Catholics were scarcely out of the Modernist crisis; by Protestants, because the Slavonic supplements, by the very fact that they spoke even in a veiled way of Jesus, were necessarily Christian interpolations. These latter, of whom Hansack is the heir, received the greatest support in an article by E. Bickermann, as always brilliant and well documented, but starting off from the same presupposition. Then, outside of questions on Slavonic philology and some jolts due to the Qumran discoveries, the matter was considered settled.

But that is not certain!

Etienne Nodet is Professor of Ancient Jewish Literature at the Ecole Biblique et Archeologique in Jerusalem.

Methinks, the 'battle' over the Slavonic Josephus is far from over. Interesting that another scholar has used it in connection with the TF....


https://www.academia.edu/6883079/The_Sl ... f_Josephus

https://ebaf.academia.edu/EtienneNodet