Giuseppe wrote: ↑Sat Nov 19, 2022 10:39 am
As to the quote reference, the book 6 of Against Julian is not available online. But I am sure that my source is good (p. 408 of the J.K.Watson's book Le christianisme avant Jésus-Christ, who quotes in turn Weill-Raynall, a very good mythicist).
If you have the book, could you post a pic of the relevant page?
Best,
Ken
I have only this:
Volney pensait que les «prétendus témoignages» de Josèphe et de Tacite sont des interpolations se situant vers le temps du concile de Nicée (325). [109] Nous les croyons postérieurs à l'empereur Julien (331-363); car, dans sa controverse avec Cyrille d'Alexandrie, «Julien déclarait que Jésus a été inconnu des écrivains notables de son époque (ou de l'époque immédiatement subséquente)». Or Cyrille n'invoque pas le témoignage de Tacite. [110]
The note 110 reads:
CYRILLE, Contre Julien, livre VI; d'après WEILL-RAYNAL, art. c, 29.
That ain't much. Migne PG 32, containing Cyril's Against Julian can be downloaded here:
Book VI begins in cols. 779-780. If you'd like to find the relevant quotation an cite it and give me the column number in which it is found, I'll take a look at it. But I'm not going to try to find it myself (too much work for me), and I'm not going to accept a paraphrase of what Cyril said Julian said from someone citing someone else who may have actually read Cyril.
W. Kinzig, T. Brüggemann, H. Kaufhold, G. Huber-Rebenich, S. Rebenich, C. Riedweg, A. Ritter, M. Vinzent, Kyrill von Alexandrien. Werke. 1. Band "Gegen Julian". Teil 2: Buch 6-10 und Fragmente, GCS NF 21, Berlin, Boston, de Gruyter, 2017. ISBN : 978-3-11-035915-2 978-3-11-036258-9
It's probably this passage (from a reconstructed text of Julian's Against the Galileans):
But what great gift of this sort do the Hebrews boast of as bestowed on them by God, the Hebrews who have persuaded you to desert to them? If you had at any rate paid heed to their teachings, you would not have fared altogether ill, and though worse than you did before, when you were with us, still your condition would have been bearable and supportable. For you would be worshipping one god instead of many, not a man, or rather many wretched men.62 And though you would be following a law that is harsh and stern and contains much that is savage and barbarous, instead of our mild and humane laws, |377 and would in other respects be inferior to us, yet you would be more holy and purer than now in your forms of worship. But now it has come to pass that like leeches you have sucked the worst blood from that source and left the purer. Yet Jesus, who won over the least worthy of you, has been known by name for but little more than three hundred years: and during his lifetime he accomplished nothing worth hearing of, unless anyone thinks that to heal crooked and blind men and to exorcise those who were possessed by evil demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany can be classed as a mighty achievement. As for purity of life you do not know whether he so much as mentioned it; but you emulate the rages and the bitterness of the Jews, overturning temples and altars,63 and you slaughtered not only those of us who remained true to the teachings of their fathers, but also men who were as much astray as yourselves, heretics,64 because they did not wail over the corpse 65 in the same fashion as yourselves. But these are rather your own doings; for nowhere did either Jesus or Paul hand down to you such commands. The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius 66 and Sergius.67 But if you can show me that one of these men is mentioned by the well-known writers of that time,----these events happened in the reign of Tiberius or Claudius,----then you may consider that I speak falsely about all matters. |379
Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Sat Nov 19, 2022 10:36 am It just means that Julian, like most Roman authors, probably hadn't read a vast array of obscure late first and early second century historians whose works were less than well-known to Roman audiences.
three objections:
How could Josephus be 'obscure' when he was the personal friend himself of well three emperors?
In addition, I think (with Dave Allen) that Tacitus knew the works of Josephus.
Third: Julian was enormously erudite, he knew even that the christianity could be debunked easily by building again the Jewish Temple.
But the strongest argument is that Cyril didn't reply to Julian by answering: "We have the Testimonium Flavianum, take that, Apostate!"
Ken Olson can't ignore this Argument from Silence, since he uses the same Argument when he applies it on Origen, Justin, Irenaeus, etc., to argue that the Testimonium was absent in Josephus before Eusebius.
(1) Because they thought of him as little more than a prisoner of war. Romans evidently, as Tacitus well attests, didn't think much of Jewish prisoners of war. And the few comments they wrote about Josephus indicate as much. Not every single person who knew the emperor had a lasting impact on history in Rome.
(2) I don't think there is any convincing reason to think that. The parallels don't really line up, and, it wouldn't make a difference. Tacitus was largely ignored by later Roman historians and writers. By all accounts, his work just seems to have fallen into near total disrepair.
(3) That doesn't mean he knew of works that had fallen out of favor or into disrepair.
Is what you're saying that the Testimonium Flavianum, or an earlier form of it, could have existed before Eusebius, and before Tacitus, and been passed over in silence until Eusebius' time because even Julian and Cyril, who were writing at a time when it definitely existed, also passed over it in silence?
