Chrissy Hansen wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 6:27 pmSo is there any help y'all can give me?
Chrissy, you got me so interested in the topic that I had to go ahead and translate those two pages! I'll email you the Japanese text and translation, but I thought I'd give a summary here for those interested.
As I expected, there were a couple of Japanese characters that I had to guess about, since they predate the standardisation of Kanji. But I'd say I've gotten 99% of the Japanese transcription (not the translation(!), just the transcription of the Japanese characters) correct, so someone with much better Japanese than mine should be able to use it to create a more accurate translation.
As for my translation: I've relied heavily on Google translate. I'm going through it to make changes that make sense to me, but that won't be much.
This is the outline of what is on those two pages:
* Kōtoku writes that the most important passage for the "the Christian Murderers" is in "Antiquities of the Jews". I'm guessing by "murderers" he means people who misrepresent Christ. But it may also mean people who murder in the name of Christ.
* He then quotes the Testimonium Flavianum, which takes up about half a page, ending with "And even today, the race of disciples who bear his name has not diminished at all."
* He then quotes from Matthew 15. The direct translation is: "In the 15th chapter of Mataichi, Christ says, 'I will not send you out of the house of Israel's lost sheep.'" Kōtoku says "If you believe this, then Christ would never have invited the Gentiles." I'm not clear what he says next, but it is to the effect that Josephus couldn't have said Jesus was Christ.
* He then brings in Eusebius, "who is famous for being able to falsify ancient Christian texts at will", and that no-one before Eusebius ever wrote about the TF. Kōtoku writes that "Lardner, Gibbon, director Warverton, Zeels, etc., [say that they] are all fakes, and even the reporters of the Encyclopedia Britannica admit it." Other than Gibbon, I don't recognise those names, and they are transliterations from katakana so the spellings might not be correct.
* Kōtoku writes that it wasn't just Josephus alone, but "At that time, nearly all of (Kota 揂太)'s literary histories did not mention Christ." Unfortunately "揂" is my best guess of what the original character in your image is, but I'm pretty sure I'm wrong. It's used quite a few times so I'll see if I can track it down. It seems to be a name, so my best guess is that it stands for "Romans" or "Gentiles".
* He then writes "According to Six(?) English Encyclopedias", the writings of Josephus were falsified. He continues to quote the Encyclopedia (I think!) with: "However, in the Unexpurgated Edition of the Talmud, there are about 20 references to Christ, and in that book, the name of Christ is called Panthera. And then, "the wisdom which we have from the heretics (concerning Christ) is actually far more than we believe we can hope and expect."
* Kōtoku then continues: "The name of Pantera has been said seven times. Celsus is known as the greatest historian and philosopher of the second century. During the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, he wrote two volumes and spared no effort in attacking the doctrine of Christianity from a philosophical point of view."
That's the end of the second page. I'll see if I can track down those two mystery Japanese characters, update my translations appropriately and email you the results. My translation is lousy, so don't read any subtly into it. I'm confident that my broad outline is correct, but I wouldn't want to launch any arguments from it.
Hope this has been helpful!