Good comments David Madison. Some final ones from me.
-- Game-changer: Kenneth W. Clark, "Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after A.D. 70", NTS 6 (1960); 269-80. The temple cult continued operable in Jerusalem in the 70-135 period and ended with Hadrian, not earlier in 70. A misbegotten scholarly construction that the temple cult and sacrifices in Jerusalem ceased in 70. Very convincing, after reading this one wonders how could scholars have thought otherwise all this time? Gone are all the arguments for pre-70 dating of Hebrews, many other texts, on the basis of speaking of the temple cult as still operable.
-- The differences you cite between the two versions of the three-and-one crucifieds (Vita, and the Christian Gospels' Passion story), accurate observations, ironically give weight in favor of argument that the Passion legend version reflects two hearsay versions of an event rather than a mimesis phenomenon in which the Gospel version was inspired literarily by the story in Vita. This is if the premise is accepted that Joseph of Arimethea is Joseph b. Matthias based on roles and description, proper name and garbled pronunciation of patronymic. In this light the Jesus crucifixion/resurrection Gospel story derives from a point of view of observers who saw bodies taken down from crosses looking all to be dead and then one seen alive again, interpreted as miracle and evidence of divine favor and significance, many ancient parallels in which unusual events are interpreted as omens or signs of cosmic significance.
-- Jesus b. Sapphat is on the short list of major figures or leaders of the Revolt. Josephus gives the fates of most of them, but Jesus b. Sapphat is among the smaller number of major figures of whom Josephus does not tell their fate. This heightens the focus on the reasonable question whether the Vita version of the underlying story whose version in the Christian Passion features a "Jesus", reflects Jesus b. Sapphat.
-- that Jesus b. Sapphat independently has other similarities to the Gospels' Jesus is illustrated by the George Solomon 19th century book named earlier, in which Solomon was able to make that argument entirely apart from identification of the Vita crucified as Jesus b. Sapphat. The only published argument in print to my knowledge which proposes the Vita crucified survivor story was Jesus b. Sapphat is the earlier-cited Vermeiren, Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity (2015). That is, Jesus b. Sapphat as the origin of the crucified/risen Jesus of Christian origin-tradition claim was not even voiced, let alone considered or discussed or refuted, prior to 2015 (to my knowledge).
-- The Gospel episode of the Gesarene demoniac and the 2000 pigs (Mk 5) already has a literature in existing NT scholarship identifying key essentials of that story as a story reflective of the time of Vespasian and Placidus's Fifth Legion in Transjordan in 68 CE--a story of a massacre of a Roman military unit by one reading of the swine into the sea--at the same time Jesus b. Sapphat is active and engaged in combat with Roman legions in the region. Josephus does not specifically situate Jesus b. Sapphat in transjordan, and the victories the Jewish rebels did inflict on Romans told by Josephus are situated by Josephus in Galilee not in transjordan, but those may be quibbles in light of the similarities in context and name of the warrior figure Jesus on the Jewish side opposing the Romans compared to Jesus of the Gospel story of the same 68 CE context.
-- The outer space preexistence and post-existence of Jesus Christ in Christian texts neither argues positively or negatively with respect to the Jesus b. Sapphat hypothesis, since on the one hand, the cosmic Christ can be argued to account for creation of all of the stories of the human figure Jesus, but on the other hand, is also not inconsistent with an actual human figure being reified in status and memory by supporters into such cosmic categories. There is a potential falsification of the Jesus b. Sapphat hypothesis however, not if a cosmic Christ idea can be shown to exist pre-70 but if a pre-70 cosmic Christ can be shown who was named "Jesus".
-- The Christian Passion story appears to have combined or melded into one fictitious combined story the trial of Jesus b. Ananias of ca. 62 CE per Josephus--who was released by Roman procurator Albinus [presumably with the help of a bribe] against the wishes of fellow Jewish accusers calling for his death--and Jesus b. Sapphias crucified per the Vita-story/reconstruction argument. That is, the Barabbas version in which Jesus is freed after a trial, and the crucified Jesus, combined into a single Passion story. That Josephus's 60s Jesus b. Ananias is the story of Jesus's trial in the Gospels is now mainstream NT scholarship at this point in the wake of the good work of Weeden.
-- Imagine the coincidence, so far: the most critical elements of the single Christian Passion story--the trial with a merciful procurator seeking to release against Jewish accusers, and the resurrection after being crucified with two others-reflect a Jesus and a Jesus both of 60s told in Josephus. Both of these origins to the Passion Story Jesus are named "Jesus" in history of the 60s (versus no known historical Jesus of the 30s independent of 2nd CE Christian origin claims). How is it that two Jesuses of history (Weeden suggests Jesus b. Ananias could be non-historical though he assumes the 30 CE Jesus still is, but never mind that), both of the 60s, when combined produce the Christian Passion Story of Jesus? What is going on there?
-- Here is where I will go a step further, not as claim of certainty but as suggestion or a probing: a suggestion that Jesus b. Ananias is indeed highly fictionalized as Weeden says, but--(drawing on that very argument) is a version of Jesus b. Sapphat. The existence of multiple and divergent tellings of figures in Josephus is well-established as a phenomenon from many comparative examples of doublets in Josephus, likely originating from Roman collection of multiple stories of the war and siege from Roman prisoner interrogations (which Josephus likely played a key role), lots of hearsay and garbling of facts and names. So here is my hypothesis going into the prosopography: "Sapphat" or something close to that is the true proper name of this Jesus's patronym, which may or may not be related to "Sepphoraeus" the patronym of Judah of 4 bce (War 1.648-655), if one wants to see a link of this Jesus to the zealot hypothesis. "Sapphat", a Greek name, also could fit into a known pattern in which Jewish (hebrew) names sounding alike phonetically were often attached to the same person, e.g. "Joseph" the patronym of Jesus of the Gospel story. Then concerning Jesus b. Ananias, and the reason underlying why he was accused and tried, argued for linking him (maybe) to the "Egyptian" of the 50s who Lena Einhorn, as well as rabbinic legends, also suggest was Jesus of the Gospels. I think the "Egyptian" could be Josephus's wilderness "Bannus" as well, and I have a speculative possibility for the meaning of "Bannus" to add to the other creative suggestions which have been proposed by others: it was a Jesus but not just any Jesus, a Jesus who was considered like the mighty conquering Joshua bar Nun of old, therefore given a nickname/pun "bar Nun" or "Bannus". Then at the later time of the siege of Jerusalem, this figure Jesus's nickname, "bar Nun" or "Bannus", was misheard or misunderstood as "bar Ananias". (Lots of examples in Josephus of garbled spellings of proper names.) As for the objection that Jesus b. Ananias died from being hit by a stone from a Roman catapault, that account of his death need merit no more confidence of having actual truth to it than the very parallel and similar report of Josephus's own death from being hit by a stone in the head. The report inside besieged Jerusalem concerning Josephus's demise, witnessed by many inside the walls of Jerusalem, was simply mistaken in Josephus's case, and there is no obvious reason to know whether such a similar report was true or mistaken in the case of Jesus b. Ananias either (though it makes a good story as Josephus tells it). Jesus b. Sapphat was a real figure; Josephus knew him and tells of him. Jesus b. Ananias in Josephus on the other hand is total hearsay, reified hearsay, said by Josephus to have been legendized into an omen of the outcome of the Revolt itself. The Christians who wrote these two Jesuses into the Passion Story thought they were the same Jesus. Whether these were two variant versions of one Jesus of the 60s, or two actual Jesuses of the same proper name of the 60s literarily combined into one in the Passion Story--either way--this is a possible origin of the Christian Jesus which has not been properly considered.
-- To bring this home to the mythicist issue under present discussion, the issue in the end would be: does the historical Jesus(es) of the 60s precede the attachment of cosmic Christ attributes to such a figure, or does a cosmic Christ, already named Jesus and already crucified and resurrected in heaven and of no historical existence, take on features of Jesus(es) of the 60s secondarily. But either way, in this reconstruction the 30s Jesus disappears from history, is gone. May productive discussion flourish.
-- Game-changer: Kenneth W. Clark, "Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after A.D. 70", NTS 6 (1960); 269-80. The temple cult continued operable in Jerusalem in the 70-135 period and ended with Hadrian, not earlier in 70. A misbegotten scholarly construction that the temple cult and sacrifices in Jerusalem ceased in 70. Very convincing, after reading this one wonders how could scholars have thought otherwise all this time? Gone are all the arguments for pre-70 dating of Hebrews, many other texts, on the basis of speaking of the temple cult as still operable.
-- The differences you cite between the two versions of the three-and-one crucifieds (Vita, and the Christian Gospels' Passion story), accurate observations, ironically give weight in favor of argument that the Passion legend version reflects two hearsay versions of an event rather than a mimesis phenomenon in which the Gospel version was inspired literarily by the story in Vita. This is if the premise is accepted that Joseph of Arimethea is Joseph b. Matthias based on roles and description, proper name and garbled pronunciation of patronymic. In this light the Jesus crucifixion/resurrection Gospel story derives from a point of view of observers who saw bodies taken down from crosses looking all to be dead and then one seen alive again, interpreted as miracle and evidence of divine favor and significance, many ancient parallels in which unusual events are interpreted as omens or signs of cosmic significance.
-- Jesus b. Sapphat is on the short list of major figures or leaders of the Revolt. Josephus gives the fates of most of them, but Jesus b. Sapphat is among the smaller number of major figures of whom Josephus does not tell their fate. This heightens the focus on the reasonable question whether the Vita version of the underlying story whose version in the Christian Passion features a "Jesus", reflects Jesus b. Sapphat.
-- that Jesus b. Sapphat independently has other similarities to the Gospels' Jesus is illustrated by the George Solomon 19th century book named earlier, in which Solomon was able to make that argument entirely apart from identification of the Vita crucified as Jesus b. Sapphat. The only published argument in print to my knowledge which proposes the Vita crucified survivor story was Jesus b. Sapphat is the earlier-cited Vermeiren, Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity (2015). That is, Jesus b. Sapphat as the origin of the crucified/risen Jesus of Christian origin-tradition claim was not even voiced, let alone considered or discussed or refuted, prior to 2015 (to my knowledge).
-- The Gospel episode of the Gesarene demoniac and the 2000 pigs (Mk 5) already has a literature in existing NT scholarship identifying key essentials of that story as a story reflective of the time of Vespasian and Placidus's Fifth Legion in Transjordan in 68 CE--a story of a massacre of a Roman military unit by one reading of the swine into the sea--at the same time Jesus b. Sapphat is active and engaged in combat with Roman legions in the region. Josephus does not specifically situate Jesus b. Sapphat in transjordan, and the victories the Jewish rebels did inflict on Romans told by Josephus are situated by Josephus in Galilee not in transjordan, but those may be quibbles in light of the similarities in context and name of the warrior figure Jesus on the Jewish side opposing the Romans compared to Jesus of the Gospel story of the same 68 CE context.
-- The outer space preexistence and post-existence of Jesus Christ in Christian texts neither argues positively or negatively with respect to the Jesus b. Sapphat hypothesis, since on the one hand, the cosmic Christ can be argued to account for creation of all of the stories of the human figure Jesus, but on the other hand, is also not inconsistent with an actual human figure being reified in status and memory by supporters into such cosmic categories. There is a potential falsification of the Jesus b. Sapphat hypothesis however, not if a cosmic Christ idea can be shown to exist pre-70 but if a pre-70 cosmic Christ can be shown who was named "Jesus".
-- The Christian Passion story appears to have combined or melded into one fictitious combined story the trial of Jesus b. Ananias of ca. 62 CE per Josephus--who was released by Roman procurator Albinus [presumably with the help of a bribe] against the wishes of fellow Jewish accusers calling for his death--and Jesus b. Sapphias crucified per the Vita-story/reconstruction argument. That is, the Barabbas version in which Jesus is freed after a trial, and the crucified Jesus, combined into a single Passion story. That Josephus's 60s Jesus b. Ananias is the story of Jesus's trial in the Gospels is now mainstream NT scholarship at this point in the wake of the good work of Weeden.
-- Imagine the coincidence, so far: the most critical elements of the single Christian Passion story--the trial with a merciful procurator seeking to release against Jewish accusers, and the resurrection after being crucified with two others-reflect a Jesus and a Jesus both of 60s told in Josephus. Both of these origins to the Passion Story Jesus are named "Jesus" in history of the 60s (versus no known historical Jesus of the 30s independent of 2nd CE Christian origin claims). How is it that two Jesuses of history (Weeden suggests Jesus b. Ananias could be non-historical though he assumes the 30 CE Jesus still is, but never mind that), both of the 60s, when combined produce the Christian Passion Story of Jesus? What is going on there?
-- Here is where I will go a step further, not as claim of certainty but as suggestion or a probing: a suggestion that Jesus b. Ananias is indeed highly fictionalized as Weeden says, but--(drawing on that very argument) is a version of Jesus b. Sapphat. The existence of multiple and divergent tellings of figures in Josephus is well-established as a phenomenon from many comparative examples of doublets in Josephus, likely originating from Roman collection of multiple stories of the war and siege from Roman prisoner interrogations (which Josephus likely played a key role), lots of hearsay and garbling of facts and names. So here is my hypothesis going into the prosopography: "Sapphat" or something close to that is the true proper name of this Jesus's patronym, which may or may not be related to "Sepphoraeus" the patronym of Judah of 4 bce (War 1.648-655), if one wants to see a link of this Jesus to the zealot hypothesis. "Sapphat", a Greek name, also could fit into a known pattern in which Jewish (hebrew) names sounding alike phonetically were often attached to the same person, e.g. "Joseph" the patronym of Jesus of the Gospel story. Then concerning Jesus b. Ananias, and the reason underlying why he was accused and tried, argued for linking him (maybe) to the "Egyptian" of the 50s who Lena Einhorn, as well as rabbinic legends, also suggest was Jesus of the Gospels. I think the "Egyptian" could be Josephus's wilderness "Bannus" as well, and I have a speculative possibility for the meaning of "Bannus" to add to the other creative suggestions which have been proposed by others: it was a Jesus but not just any Jesus, a Jesus who was considered like the mighty conquering Joshua bar Nun of old, therefore given a nickname/pun "bar Nun" or "Bannus". Then at the later time of the siege of Jerusalem, this figure Jesus's nickname, "bar Nun" or "Bannus", was misheard or misunderstood as "bar Ananias". (Lots of examples in Josephus of garbled spellings of proper names.) As for the objection that Jesus b. Ananias died from being hit by a stone from a Roman catapault, that account of his death need merit no more confidence of having actual truth to it than the very parallel and similar report of Josephus's own death from being hit by a stone in the head. The report inside besieged Jerusalem concerning Josephus's demise, witnessed by many inside the walls of Jerusalem, was simply mistaken in Josephus's case, and there is no obvious reason to know whether such a similar report was true or mistaken in the case of Jesus b. Ananias either (though it makes a good story as Josephus tells it). Jesus b. Sapphat was a real figure; Josephus knew him and tells of him. Jesus b. Ananias in Josephus on the other hand is total hearsay, reified hearsay, said by Josephus to have been legendized into an omen of the outcome of the Revolt itself. The Christians who wrote these two Jesuses into the Passion Story thought they were the same Jesus. Whether these were two variant versions of one Jesus of the 60s, or two actual Jesuses of the same proper name of the 60s literarily combined into one in the Passion Story--either way--this is a possible origin of the Christian Jesus which has not been properly considered.
-- To bring this home to the mythicist issue under present discussion, the issue in the end would be: does the historical Jesus(es) of the 60s precede the attachment of cosmic Christ attributes to such a figure, or does a cosmic Christ, already named Jesus and already crucified and resurrected in heaven and of no historical existence, take on features of Jesus(es) of the 60s secondarily. But either way, in this reconstruction the 30s Jesus disappears from history, is gone. May productive discussion flourish.
Add to this the fact that Josephus in Vita introduces the survival of that victim from the cross precisely near the end of the entire book, and by then the reader knows from previous passages of Vita that Josephus has already saved the life of Jesus b.Sapphat. Is there a pattern by Josephus to show the same magnanimity with the same person fallen into his hands twice?
