Interesting observation by Dave Allen on the lack of the name Jesus in the Slavonic Josephus.
The Slavonic
Before the thirteenth century, in Constantinople or its environs, a mutant form of the TF found its way into a Greek text of the War of the Jews. (Read on to see that this was an earlier Greek examplar of the manuscripts of the Slavonic we have now).
This is now known as the ‘Slavonic Josephus.’ The material corresponding to the beginning of the Testimonium was inserted between the third and fourth paragraphs of the ninth chapter of Book 2 of War. “… it is certainly a noteworthy fact that Josephus’ silence about Jesus in the Jewish War was felt to be a defect at quite an early period, with the result that attempts were made to remedy this state of affairs by a bold insertion of the Testimonium into the War.” [6]
All scholars recognize that the Slavonic has been destroyed with Christian gloss as explained very well by Van Voorst:
“The Slavonic Josephus reflects the growing Christian tendency to excuse Pontius Pilate for Jesus’ death and to blame the Jews, even to the point of saying that the Jews themselves crucified Jesus. To make this point, the Slavonic version has to ignore Josephus’s original statement that Pilate crucified him….The Slavonic Testimonium uses the New Testament extensively at several points to develop its story.” [7]
But then Van Voorst goes on to say that the Slavonic does “not provide an authentic textual alternative to the main Testimonium Flavianum in the Jewish Antiquities.” [8]
Yet Christians were trying to bolster up the TF, so Van Voorst fails to explain why they dropped his name “Jesus” and title “Christ”. Both De Excidio and the Slavonic do not have Pilate crucifying Jesus (which could be explained by the general trend of taking the blame off of the Romans and placing it onto the Jews. Both recensions also do not name Jesus or call him Christ. Same as in De Excidio, this would not have happened if the Slavonic had come from the textus receptus found in the manuscripts of Antiquities that were post Eusebian tampering. Of course it is easier to explain if the Slavonic came from a Greek exemplar that existed before the editing of Eusebius. It would explain it perfectly if it came from an exemplar that existed before Eusebius added the words ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’. There is evidence it came from an early Greek exemplar as a number of Greek words were taken over literally by the Russian. [9] For example: igemon, metropolja, archierei, skinopigja, katapetasma, aramatji and others just shows that the Slavonic is working off an early Greek exemplar. The Slavonic has the same attributes as the De Excidio, (not naming Jesus or calling him Christ) as if it came from the same textual family of a pre Eusebian Greek examplar. The De Excidio is a paraphrase of a pre-Eusebian TF whereas the Slavonic is an expansion of a pre-Eusebian TF.
The Slavonic is so bloated, it is laughable. The most telling part of Slavonic is the fact that it says so much about Jesus except his name. It refers to him as “there appeared a certain man” (Slavonic War 2.9.3/4). This suggests that this particular line of transmission has preserved the notion that Jesus was not named in the original TF.
Jesus not being named is not unusual for Josephus, cases such as the ‘Egyptian’ (War 2.13.5) who led a revolt of thousands and featured in both Antiquities and War yet he could only call him the ‘Egyptian’. Same goes for the ‘Samaritan’. (Ant. 18.5.1).
In the following sentence contained in the Slavonic TF could have come from an original TF, “And many souls were roused, thinking that thereby the Jewish tribes could free themselves from Roman hands.” The word tribe is also in the last sentence of the TF. That line plus the fact Jesus was not named nor called Christ, are the parts that the Slavonic has preserved from the original TF.
As damaged as the Slavonic is with Christian gloss, it is on a different transmission line than the Arabic and Michael the Syrian recension. Therefore it is valuable as it came from a pre Eusebian Greek exemplar.
https://davesblogs.home.blog/2021/12/02 ... of-the-tf/
Without the name Jesus in the Josephan TF Julian would have had no reason to quote Josephus. To assume that Julian did not quote the TF/Josephus because there was no TF in his copy of Antiquities is very shortsighted. As I've said a number of times regarding the TF being a whole cloth Eusebius invention - letting Josephus off the hook is not the way to proceed in investigating early christian origins.