Dave Allen arguing for a genuine Testimonium Flavianum: a criticism

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
andrewcriddle
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Re: Dave Allen arguing for a genuine Testimonium Flavianum: a criticism

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neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 4:43 pm
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:03 am
Are you arguing that establishing a belief in a historical Jesus in Judea before the Jewish war would not prove that Jesus existed ? If so this is technically correct but not IMO very interesting.
No. That's not what I wrote at all, nor even implied. Did you notice the point I made about the establishment of the source of what authors write? (Your point might be clearer if you were more direct. A "belief" does not exist alone; people have beliefs. Be specific.)
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:03 amOr are you arguing that an authentic original form of the TF would not establish a belief in a historical Jesus in Judea before the Jewish war ? . . . .

Andrew Criddle
I am arguing exactly what I argued and expressed. Why are you taking my words to mean far more than I say to make them sound illogical? Why not address what I have actually written? No less, but no more, either.

Is what I have written contrary to justifiable historical methods and interpretation of source material or not?
I'll try and clarify.

Assuming there is an authentic core to the Josephan passages about Jesus, then Josephus did not invent this material.

The passage about the death of James is presumably based on Judean accounts going back to before Josephus was taken to Rome. (In order to challenge this one needs to propose a plausible alternative.)
Therefore at least some people (maybe only followers of Jesus) in Judea before the Jewish war were making claims about a recent historical Jesus.
If so, this does not prove the existence of a historical Jesus but is strong evidence thereof.

Andrew Criddle

(I'm away for a few days I won't be able to respond till next week.)
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maryhelena
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Re: Dave Allen arguing for a genuine Testimonium Flavianum: a criticism

Post by maryhelena »

andrewcriddle wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 11:50 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 4:43 pm
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:03 am
Are you arguing that establishing a belief in a historical Jesus in Judea before the Jewish war would not prove that Jesus existed ? If so this is technically correct but not IMO very interesting.
No. That's not what I wrote at all, nor even implied. Did you notice the point I made about the establishment of the source of what authors write? (Your point might be clearer if you were more direct. A "belief" does not exist alone; people have beliefs. Be specific.)
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:03 amOr are you arguing that an authentic original form of the TF would not establish a belief in a historical Jesus in Judea before the Jewish war ? . . . .

Andrew Criddle
I am arguing exactly what I argued and expressed. Why are you taking my words to mean far more than I say to make them sound illogical? Why not address what I have actually written? No less, but no more, either.

Is what I have written contrary to justifiable historical methods and interpretation of source material or not?
I'll try and clarify.

Assuming there is an authentic core to the Josephan passages about Jesus, then Josephus did not invent this material.

The passage about the death of James is presumably based on Judean accounts going back to before Josephus was taken to Rome. (In order to challenge this one needs to propose a plausible alternative.)
Presumably based on Judean accounts......that is not good enough as an historical argument for the Josephan James passage.

Josephus was a Jewish historian. Consequently, when he dates an account, as he has done with the James story, it's vital that one seeks an historical argument for his placing the James story in the time of Albinus - 62 - 64 c.e. What would have motivated Josephus to use this dating for his James story ? Hasmonean history is the answer. 100 years earlier and Hasmonean history records the Roman execution of the last King of the Jews, Antigonus in 37 b.c.

Antigonus, the last King and High Priest of the Jews, bound to a cross, flogged and slain in 37 b.c.100 year Anniversary of the killing of Antigonus, 63 c.e.
High Priests, 37/36 b.c, appointed by Herod the GreatHigh Priests, 62/63 c.e, appointed by Agrippa II
Ananelus 37/36 b.c. (removed)Joseph Cabi ben Simon, (removed)
Aristobulus III, high priest, drowned, (plot of Herod the Great) brother of Mariamne I. (36/35 b.c.)Ananus ben Ananus, (removed) 3 month rule, James stoned, brother of JC.
Ananelus (restored) 35-30 b.c.Jesus ben Damneus, made High Priest.

(The brother of Antigonus, Alexander of Judea, re Wikipedia and Josephus, was beheaded in Antioch in 48/47 b.c)

Yes, we have a James the brother of Jesus in the gospel story. Yes, we have a James, brother of Jesus, in the Antiquities James passage. What we have are two stories - two allegorical accounts - not two historical accounts. Josephus is interested in remembering Hasmonean history. From his placing of the TF in 19 c.e. to his James passage in 63 c.e. and his John the baptizer passage in 36/37 c.e. (100 years from the loss of Hasmonean sovereignty in 63 b.c.), Josephus is recalling past Hasmonean history. (under of course the tragedy of Roman occupation).

That the Josephan dating of these three stories reflect linkage to relevant dates in Hasmonean history - and that the gospel of Luke has done likewise with it's gLuke dating of Pilate and the JC crucifixion story - surely must open up avenues of research into the role of the Josephan writer in enabling the writer of gLuke in updating, compiling, a new dated version of the Jesus story.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Dave Allen arguing for a genuine Testimonium Flavianum: a criticism

Post by neilgodfrey »

andrewcriddle wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 11:50 pm I'll try and clarify.

Assuming there is an authentic core to the Josephan passages about Jesus, then Josephus did not invent this material.
Correct. But that's missing my point. [Added later: it is also a tautology -- by "authentic core" we mean that Josephus was responsible for the material.]

andrewcriddle wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 11:50 pmTherefore at least some people (maybe only followers of Jesus) in Judea before the Jewish war were making claims about a recent historical Jesus.

If so, this does not prove the existence of a historical Jesus but is strong evidence thereof.
It is the step that you take to get to that "therefore" that completely bypasses the point I was making.

Here is the critical point:
I'm of that school of historical methods as exemplified by the great classicist and historian of ancient times, Moses I. Finley. Historians today, at least when doing serious work, most of them no doubt, no longer read sources at face value but bring to them a critical eye. Uppermost in the historian's mind when reading ancient works is the question: Why is the author telling his readers this piece of information? And right behind that question is: How does the author know this piece of information? Or, where does this information come from? What is its source?
It is that last step that is of paramount interest to a historian seeking to reconstruct events from the sources. Is the author an eyewitness? If not, who or what is his source?

The point about the TF is interesting in this respect. The only reason I can understand such a preoccupation with attempting to create a hypothetical source (what Josephus "really" wrote) is because Josephus is so sorely needed as the only possible first century evidence for Jesus. Otherwise, what is the point? As Ken Olson has pointed out here, nothing new is learned about Jesus from any of these sources, the one we have or hypothetical substitutes.

I suppose I need to hasten to add that lack of evidence in Josephus is not the reason to deny the historicity of Jesus. I am not interested in the historicity-mythicist debate re Jesus. The question is a non-issue for me. If a historical Jesus turns out to be the best hypothesis to explain the beginnings of Christianity as we understand it from the earliest sources, then great. If not, nothing lost -- not even a need to deny a historical Jesus.

My point is that with the case of the TF and its presumed relevance as "evidence for the HJ", biblical scholars (those who are most engaged with this debate) follow the same train of reasoning as they use for so much else in their descriptions of Christian origins. There is scarcely any substantive overlap in methods with historians in other departments. There is a kind of conditioning that has taken place when reading and writing about Christian origins that is in actuality a mental leap from disciplined logic and productive scepticism into confirmation bias and vagueness of narrative detail and question-begging.

Unless Josephus informs us (directly or indirectly -- or if a third party throws light on the explanation) how he came by his information about Jesus then we have no way to determine the historical validity of his words. Did they come from a Christian believer or someone in contact with Christian believers? Where? Rome? Was the source of that believer the Gospel of Mark or such?

I have pointed to Moses I. Finley as a well-known name who discussed such methods of historical research and assessment of sources. But he has been followed by many (not that he was the first to embrace and justify the methods). Only an hour ago I was reading the following by another ancient historian -- From the Introduction to Christians in Caesar's Household by Michael Flexsenhar III (Kindle).

e.g. The narrative (or model of Christian origins) is planted over the sources and the sources are read back as confirmation of that narrative
The narrative has allowed a body of ancient literary ... references—[we can think here of the "original TF" hypotheses]—to be routinely cited as historical evidence . . . .
When the same references can be cited over and over again as evidence . . . but without any explanation for how the process . . . actually occurred, the narrative is driving the historiography
The same literary ... references ... have been repeated in scholarship because almost always these references are taken at face value. In the absence of an alternative interpretation the references lead to a confirmation bias ....
----
Added some time after posting the above:

I wrote,
I suppose I need to hasten to add that lack of evidence in Josephus is not the reason to deny the historicity of Jesus. I am not interested in the historicity-mythicist debate re Jesus. The question is a non-issue for me. If a historical Jesus turns out to be the best hypothesis to explain the beginnings of Christianity as we understand it from the earliest sources, then great. If not, nothing lost -- not even a need to deny a historical Jesus.
The reason I do not factor a historical Jesus into a model of Christian origins till now is because the is no "fact" or "datum" of a "historical Jesus" in the sources. There is a theological Jesus and a literary Jesus. Trying to argue for or against the historicity of Jesus does not interest me because it tells us nothing about Christian origins. All such arguments can do is conclude a certain probability for a stand-alone hypothesis.

Now if the sources that we have for early Christianity can be best, or only, explained by the insertion of a historical Jesus, then that would be the best proof for the historicity of Jesus. That is, the explanatory power of such a construct. To date, I believe most scholars would argue the reverse: how the model of Christian origins beginning with a historical Jesus "works" and how the data can be interpreted through that model. In other words, all the sins that I quoted from Flexsenhar above apply.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Dave Allen arguing for a genuine Testimonium Flavianum: a criticism

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I pretty much dismissed this as a misreading of what I had written at first, but on second thoughts I think that, even though a gross misreading, it nonetheless goes to the heart of the question of how and on what basis we so often tend to naively read historicity into ancient accounts:
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:03 am Are you arguing that establishing a belief in a historical Jesus in Judea before the Jewish war would not prove that Jesus existed ? If so this is technically correct but not IMO very interesting.
Herodotus recorded -- and I believe his account -- that there were eyewitnesses who believed they saw Heracles turn up at a battle and fight with them. Does establishing that a historian documented such a belief prove that Heracles existed?

Josephus wrote of his firm belief -- on the basis of eyewitness reports -- that angelic warriors appeared in the sky; he also documented the "facts" that a cow gave birth to a lamb and that a Cassandra figure, on dramatic cue, cried out Doom, Doom prior to the destruction of the Temple.

We have documented accounts in our time of belief (eyewitness reports) of Elvis appearing alive years after his death, of alien abductions.

We have instances throughout history.... William Tell, Ned Ludd, ... people believed to have existed but did not.

Historians have developed methods of criticism of reading their sources to help them distil such "false positives", we might say, from the findings. Unfortunately -- as some other historians have also noted -- those methods are left at the gate when it comes to reading literature that is related to core cultural icons.
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Re: Dave Allen arguing for a genuine Testimonium Flavianum: a criticism

Post by andrewcriddle »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:02 am I pretty much dismissed this as a misreading of what I had written at first, but on second thoughts I think that, even though a gross misreading, it nonetheless goes to the heart of the question of how and on what basis we so often tend to naively read historicity into ancient accounts:
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:03 am Are you arguing that establishing a belief in a historical Jesus in Judea before the Jewish war would not prove that Jesus existed ? If so this is technically correct but not IMO very interesting.
Herodotus recorded -- and I believe his account -- that there were eyewitnesses who believed they saw Heracles turn up at a battle and fight with them. Does establishing that a historian documented such a belief prove that Heracles existed?

Josephus wrote of his firm belief -- on the basis of eyewitness reports -- that angelic warriors appeared in the sky; he also documented the "facts" that a cow gave birth to a lamb and that a Cassandra figure, on dramatic cue, cried out Doom, Doom prior to the destruction of the Temple.
These accounts are probably mostly based on real events some of which we would interpret differently. (In terms of Jewish practice at the time I have problems with a pregnant heifer about to give birth being sacrificed at Passover quite apart from its unusual offspring.)
neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:02 am We have documented accounts in our time of belief (eyewitness reports) of Elvis appearing alive years after his death, of alien abductions.

We have instances throughout history.... William Tell, Ned Ludd, ... people believed to have existed but did not.

Historians have developed methods of criticism of reading their sources to help them distil such "false positives", we might say, from the findings. Unfortunately -- as some other historians have also noted -- those methods are left at the gate when it comes to reading literature that is related to core cultural icons.
Without going through these specific examples I agree that false positives exist. However there is a risk that in our concern about them we remove true positives. I am not sure that if Josephus (unusually for his time) had given more evidence about his sources that it would make much difference to the value of his testimony. The potential problems would remain is Josephus correctly paraphrasing his source ? is his source reliable ? etc. If you are sufficiently sceptical about ones sources then one cannot use them for historical purposes.

(I've been rereading Sir Moses Finley's World of Odysseus IMHO his claim that the world of the Odyssey and Illiad is not the world of their time of composition c 750 BCE but the world of dark age Greece c 900 CE is probably correct. However by your principles this would appear to be unfounded speculation.)

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neilgodfrey
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Re: Dave Allen arguing for a genuine Testimonium Flavianum: a criticism

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andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:28 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:02 am I pretty much dismissed this as a misreading of what I had written at first, but on second thoughts I think that, even though a gross misreading, it nonetheless goes to the heart of the question of how and on what basis we so often tend to naively read historicity into ancient accounts:
andrewcriddle wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 8:03 am Are you arguing that establishing a belief in a historical Jesus in Judea before the Jewish war would not prove that Jesus existed ? If so this is technically correct but not IMO very interesting.
Herodotus recorded -- and I believe his account -- that there were eyewitnesses who believed they saw Heracles turn up at a battle and fight with them. Does establishing that a historian documented such a belief prove that Heracles existed?

Josephus wrote of his firm belief -- on the basis of eyewitness reports -- that angelic warriors appeared in the sky; he also documented the "facts" that a cow gave birth to a lamb and that a Cassandra figure, on dramatic cue, cried out Doom, Doom prior to the destruction of the Temple.
These accounts are probably mostly based on real events some of which we would interpret differently.
A historical novel or movie can be "based on real events" but that's not what historians rely upon as sources for "what happened".

Yes, there was a battle, but no, no-one saw Heracles appear there. That is not true -- despite the eyewitness assurances passed on to Herodotus.

No-one saw angels in the sky at Le Mons or Jerusalem -- despite all the reports of eye-witness sightings. Those things did not happen though reporters and even historians have vouched for them on the basis of eye-witness accounts.

The Cassandra figure is a stock literary motif that is most readily explained as just that.

Establishing "a belief that X happened" does not -- cannot -- of itself verify the historicity of the event. That's not how law-courts work, nor any valid investigation, including historical ones.

andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:28 am (In terms of Jewish practice at the time I have problems with a pregnant heifer about to give birth being sacrificed at Passover quite apart from its unusual offspring.)
Yet this was vouchsafed as historical by Josephus.
andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:28 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:02 am We have documented accounts in our time of belief (eyewitness reports) of Elvis appearing alive years after his death, of alien abductions.

We have instances throughout history.... William Tell, Ned Ludd, ... people believed to have existed but did not.

Historians have developed methods of criticism of reading their sources to help them distil such "false positives", we might say, from the findings. Unfortunately -- as some other historians have also noted -- those methods are left at the gate when it comes to reading literature that is related to core cultural icons.
Without going through these specific examples I agree that false positives exist. However there is a risk that in our concern about them we remove true positives. I am not sure that if Josephus (unusually for his time) had given more evidence about his sources that it would make much difference to the value of his testimony.
No, historians of the time did seek to assure their readers in different ways of the authenticity of their reports. They explained how they did their research (often interviewing eyewitnesses) or how they knew this or that, what sources they used. Not in the same degree or style that scholars do, but compare Josephus with Thucydides whom he sought to emulate.

Historians don't read ancient sources and assume, well, this is the best we've got, so we'll have to accept this account as close to the truth as we can get.
andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:28 am The potential problems would remain is Josephus correctly paraphrasing his source ? is his source reliable ? etc. If you are sufficiently sceptical about ones sources then one cannot use them for historical purposes.
No, that is an overstatement that simply bypasses how historians read their sources and it reduces the meaning of the word "sceptical" to a nonsense, to pyrrhonism. There is always room for doubt, of course, and all hypotheses and knowledge must be provisional, always open to new evidence and revision. But that's true of everything.

Example, historians of Roman times writing about Alexander informed readers of the contemporary sources they used. Thucydides spoke to eyewitnesses but confessed when he fabricated speeches. That sort of information, especially when added to information supplied about the historian himself, gives some assurance to the historical researcher. It does not allow the researcher to accept it all naively. There is still room for critical analysis. And we need to have some external witness somewhere along the line to allow us to have confidence that we are not reading total fiction or baseless propaganda. But we are on reasonable grounds to begin a study of an actual event when we have such information -- as we often do through many of our ancient sources.
andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 7:28 am (I've been rereading Sir Moses Finley's World of Odysseus IMHO his claim that the world of the Odyssey and Illiad is not the world of their time of composition c 750 BCE but the world of dark age Greece c 900 CE is probably correct. However by your principles this would appear to be unfounded speculation.)
You have not addressed my "principles" except to suggest -- contrary to what I have attempted to explain -- that they are a kind of pyrrhonism. And no, we have archaeological evidence to enable us to interpret the setting of Homer's world.

I am speaking of a need for independent confirmation but you seem to be rejecting that as the way to leave historians in no better position than making unfounded speculations. That's the opposite of what independent confirmation leads to.


"My principles" have been taken from Moses Finley's works, in particular those where he discusses methods:
  • Finley, M. I. 1999. Ancient History: Evidence and Models. ACLS History E-Book Project.
  • Finley, M. I. 1972. Aspects of Antiquity: Discoveries and Controversies. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin.
I have quoted key sections from both at Ancient History, a “Funny Kind of History”


As for your reference to World of Odysseus, Finley explains how his setting in the Dark Age is based on external evidence independent of the writings of Homer -- which is the point I am making (from Finley!). Notice what he explains on page 157 of the second revised edition:
it remains to consider whether there are positive grounds for an early Dark Age location of the world of Odysseus. . . . .

Clearly no decision about the date of the world of Odysseus can rest on the tripods and cauldrons, but the case improves when we turn, second, to domestic architecture. . .
As for the historical event of the Trojan War itself, Finley concludes after a detailed discussion of the external independent evidence:
Some of us are more sceptical : Homer's Trojan War, we suggest, must be evicted from the history of the Greek Bronze Age.
My "method" is simply that we apply the principles of Finley's methods to our reading of Josephus.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Tue Oct 26, 2021 5:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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