Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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mlinssen
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Re: Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Post by mlinssen »

Peter Kirby wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:45 pm
BTW - not sure why, but the cyan background is kinda tiring to read, despite having reasonable contrast.
I always welcome criticism Peter.
The criticism that I find most helpful is one that not only elaborates on what can be improved, but also how such can be the case

With 64 million colours (just about) the possibilities are endless

I reckon you wouldn't fancy pink, that black would be very unhelpful, and so on.
I like to reserve yellow for my Thomas quotes, white for Bible verses, and have just recently decided that it would be nice to have a different colour for Greek Bible text, and book quotes

I'm looking for something light, can't be the colour that is used for quotes of course. You must have seen more colours used in here than you can remember - what would you suggest?

[EDIT:
seems okay. Just a slight colour, code #E8F8F8. I'll admit the huge first post in cyan was rather, well, really very cyan LOL

]
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Post by Peter Kirby »

mlinssen wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:32 am
seems okay. Just a slight colour, code #E8F8F8. I'll admit the huge first post in cyan was rather, well, really very cyan LOL

That's a nice color, yeah.
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Re: Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Post by Stuart »

mlinssen,

I agree Josephus was definitely used by Luke (Luke-Acts) and possibly some other elements came into the other gospels. Of course each gospel suffered revisions, so it's not clear when and by what path and Josephus element would have found it's way into the others.

The rule of thumb I follow is from general to specific. Details, names of people and places, digressions, are all color added later. As I see the NT as mostly writings from 2nd quarter of the 2nd century to the beginning of the 3rd century, Josephus would certainly have been available as a source.

My crack was about your reading the NT into Josephus' comment about writing histories. It struck me as the same Christian-centric view that everything is read as a reference to Christianity; other possibilities vanish. I thought you'd realize that and not go into a lengthy explanation of what we all know about the intersection of Josephus, the Gospels and Acts.
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Re: Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Post by mlinssen »

Stuart wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 3:03 pm mlinssen,

My crack was about your reading the NT into Josephus' comment about writing histories. It struck me as the same Christian-centric view that everything is read as a reference to Christianity; other possibilities vanish. I thought you'd realize that and not go into a lengthy explanation of what we all know about the intersection of Josephus, the Gospels and Acts.
Well, I just inserted NT there for fun, naturally the phrase didn't exist until 5th CE somewhere abouts and naturally he meant other writings, real or not - but it fits fine, doesn't it? In the line of thinking of "it takes one to know one" it is very plausible that what Josephus describes is what others did back then, and likely what he had been guilty of as well

We know that parts of Josephus are fabrications - I think that all of Josephus is; one very grand story to give Christianity a background.
Would that be something defined as "what we all know about the intersection of Josephus, the Gospels and Acts"?
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Re: Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Post by Stuart »

The reason Josephus' writings survived is because the early Church found him useful. His history overlapped some of the events which are otherwise not recorded.

The question is were some of the names, places and principle players lifted from his works to place Jesus in history? Quite possibly. I have long been of the opinion the synoptic prototype began simply "In those days", and many of the principle players were likely unnamed governor, king and chief priest. But at some point that started to change and get fixed in time. "In the Fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" pretty much forced the characters in place. A work like Josephus, would have been an excellent source to writers seeking to add details to their versions. (I think it was a process, even the Marcionite author was likely not an inventor of the date, but rather a recorder of a more or less agreed upon moment by the movement as a whole -- the date didn't elicit controversy, rather was built upon.) So it's quite likely Christian scribes kept copies for reference.

Of course having a reference copy also meant pious Christian scribes felt free to correct his work and insert additional items to record key Christian events, such as John the baptist execution and one about Jesus called the Christ and another about James the Just.

That is my guess how it came about. The stories were derived from OT exegesis, placed in more recent settings, and the reference to details drawn from a source.

This is a guess, an opinion, nothing more
Last edited by Stuart on Thu May 06, 2021 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Post by mlinssen »

Stuart wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 11:56 pm
This is a guess, an opinion, nothing more
We're all merely guessing, and giving our opinions, in cases like these. I like how you sketch the broad outlines, and I agree with that

Stories never come from out of nowhere, they have to relate to something. It's like a bad joke: a bad joke is something that you either can't relate to at all, or is a distortion of the truth to an extent that is just too great: there must be cores of truth to a story, a joke, anything

I think all of Josephus is a fabrication, I can't imagine that the Roman army would have trouble kicking the Judeans' ass. So he had to go back to Pompey and make it look big because he had to make 65-70 look big because the alleged prophecy of the temple destruction, a distortion of logion 71, had to come true

There was no war in 66-70, I really like Mason and other researchers: the coins show tourist scenes, just love peace and happiness. There was no temple destruction either, all we have is the depiction of a menorah in the arch of Titus. The funny thing is that even the entire parade in Josephus is devoid of any and all objects from Judea - as devoid of those as the alleged miracles of the alleged Jesus are devoid of persistence, and only lasted a few hours at best

It is all one great hoax from start to end, and no matter how often they got their dates wrong, their locations, their names, their Latin loanwords: people just have to believe it because they don't want to admit that they've been fooled, and screwed - royally

Does anyone here touch my peculiar cases?

search.php?keywords=Peculiar+case&terms ... mit=Search

No, because there's nothing to derail them with.
There's nothing that can be brought against them.
There's only hard-core textual criticism to them.
Theta only one explanation possible - but that's not a very convenient one, so the posts don't get touched

Because at the end of the day, most of the usual suspects here are only interested in reading what they write themselves, and upholding that status quo

We had a joke back at Capgemini in the 00's when knowledge management was a hype, and we had a huge kind of forum / plaza, called KNew!
The write-only KNew is what we called it, because it was just one big mess of documents and posts, utter chaos, copy-paste stuff, rehashing of ideas without beginning or end

Well, these are the write-only EW, where people mostly post irrelevant nitty gritty omphaloskepsisms, preferably in long posts with a lot of quotes and copies of texts, and Greek to go because it looks sexy

I really like your idea Stuart and it stands out, and I find it so strange that none of those pre-stories have ever been found - so I'm inclined to think that there weren't many, if any

Think about it: what could be left out of Josephus? Perhaps a nice topic for a new thread
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Re: Josephus provided a model for the first testament

Post by mlinssen »

mlinssen wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 12:03 pm
Stuart wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 11:56 pm
This is a guess, an opinion, nothing more
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/complete.vi.i.html

You might like that one. Scroll down for the NT
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