VinnyJH wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 2:16 pm
Does anyone else wonder about these "equitable" citizens who got all worked up over the injustice done to James? Ananus was not someone to be trifled with. Who would really have challenged him for the sake of the peasant brother of a failed messiah? That has always made me lean toward interpolation.
It's been a while; welcome back.
(Received) Josephus doesn't actually say that anybody cared about James as an individual.
20.201 The fairest of the citizens and those most upset at the breaking of the laws, disliked this being done and sent to the king, asking him to stop Ananus from acting like this in future, as what he had already done was not right.
20.202 Some of them also went to meet Albinus as he was on his way from Alexandria, to tell him that Ananus had wrongfully assembled a Sanhedrin without his consent.
20.203 Albinus agreed with this and wrote in anger to Ananus threatening to punish him for doing this. So king Agrippa deposed him from the high priesthood, after he had ruled for only three months, and appointed Jesus, the son of Damnaeus, as high priest.
https://www.biblical.ie/page.php?fl=jos ... ies/AJGk20
It doesn't seem to be a matter of trifling with Ananus. The citizens had the law on their side, and Albinus and Agrippa enforced the law. Granted, there was risk involved, but there always is risk in politics yet people play politics anyway.
I do agree with your conclusion, though, that there's an interpolation more likely than not. I also share a sense that a politically well connected James (e.g. brother of one or the other of the two priestly Jesuses mentioned in the story, a son of Damneus or of Gamaliel) might have more strongly motivated the citizenry who enjoyed personal access to the king and procurator to appreciate the niceties of the law of occupation.