Dave Allen: an analysis

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Ken Olson
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by Ken Olson »

PART 2.1

Lastly, Dave Allen's point about the location of the Testimonium within Josephus Antiquities at 18.63-64:

(17) The location of the Testimonium makes more sense for a negative original than the current form

Allen: Significantly, the TF is to be found right in the very middle of the rebel passages. This argues against an ex nihilo interpolation, since it is highly unlikely that Christian scribes would have chosen to put their testimony to Jesus right in the middle of the rebel section of Antiquities. This observation supports the rebel paradigm for Jesus. This is underappreciated.

Far from being underappreciated, I think this is overstated. Many of the arguments about negative tone depend on the theory that Josephus wrote them in the first place. We have to first assume Josephus wrote them in order to understand their tone as negative; the same words that might sound negative coming from Josephus do not when coming from Eusebius.

I've occasionally seen people argue that a christian interpolator would not have written some of the things in the Testimonium for fear that they might sound negative when placed on the lips of Josephus. Besides Dave Allen, I have seen others suggest that no Christian writer would have placed the Testimonium right before the scandalous Paulina passage that begins at 18.65.

I think these kinds of objections greatly overstate the amount of attention Christians paid to the context of the Testimonium within Josephus Antiquities. I have said before that I have no firm opinion on whether a later scribe took the Testimonium from the Ecclesiastical History and placed it within the Antiquities or whether Eusebius oversaw the placement himself; I have said I don't think he wrote the passage for the context of the Antiquities, but for the context in his own work (most probably the Demonstratio). I think the insertion into the Antiquities came later, and the location was probably chosen because it was the first point after the introduction of Pilate the procurator of Judea in 18.55 where the passage could fit without breaking into the middle of an existing story.

But when we look at the argument that an interpolator would not have placed it within that context because it would reflect negatively on Jesus, placing him alongside rebels and charlatans, we have to ask - where's the evidence that any Christian of the ancient or medieval period ever cared about that? Like many of the objections to the interpolation theory, I don't think we have any evidence that anyone ever made such an objection until the authenticity of the text came into question during the Reformation. I don't think the observation that the context reflected negatively on Jesus was ever made until it was used as defense of the theory of Josephan authorship.

I'll add a link to David Hindley's compilation of English translation of ancient and medieval witnesses to the Testimonium so anyone who wants to can look:

http://www.textexcavation.com/documents/hindleyref.html

Best wishes,

Ken
Last edited by Ken Olson on Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by neilgodfrey »

Ken Olson wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 10:57 am
.... The first blog post I have planned is on the Matthean Priority Hypothesis, which I'm not sure is of great interest on this list.
It is of great interest to me. Is it available in some form in another discussion or publication somewhere?
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maryhelena
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by maryhelena »

Ken Olson wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 11:47 am PART 2.1

Lastly, Dave Allen's point about the location of the Testimonium within Josephus Antiquities at 18.63-64:

(17) The location of the Testimonium makes more sense for a negative original than the current form

Allen: Significantly, the TF is to be found right in the very middle of the rebel passages. This argues against an ex nihilo interpolation, since it is highly unlikely that Christian scribes would have chosen to put their testimony to Jesus right in the middle of the rebel section of Antiquities. This observation supports the rebel paradigm for Jesus. This is underappreciated.

Far from being underappreciated, I think this is overstated. Many of the arguments about negative tone depend on the theory that Josephus wrote them in the first place. We have to first assume Josephus wrote them in order to understand their tone as negative; the same words that might sound negative coming from Josephus do not when coming from Eusebius.
A negative TF theory, I would suggest, rests more with acknowledging the gospel underlying rebel/zealot type Jesus than any negative argument supposedly from Josephus. (after all a rebel Jesus theory has been around for a long time, Bermejo-Rubio being a more recent advocate of the theory. Dave Allen has no need to resort to a reconstructed TF for his negative Jesus TF theory.)

I think these kinds of objections greatly overstate the amount of attention Christians paid to the context of the Testimonium within Josephus Antiquities. I have said before that I have no firm opinion on whether a later scribe took the Testimonium from the Ecclesiastical History and placed it within the Antiquities or whether Eusebius oversaw the placement himself; I have said I don't think he wrote the passage for the context of the Antiquities, but for the context in his own work (most probably the Demonstratio). I think the insertion into the Antiquities came later, and the location was probably chosen because it was the first point after the introduction of Pilate the procurator of Judea in 18.55 where the passage could fit without breaking into the middle of an existing story.
Eusebius wrote:

(Josephus) in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, says that about the twelfth year of the reign of Tiberius, who had succeeded to the empire after Augustus had ruled fiftyseven years, Pontius Pilate was entrusted with the government of Judea, and that he remained there ten full years, almost until the death of Tiberius.

2. Accordingly the forgery of those who have recently given currency to acts against our Saviour is clearly proved. For the very date given in them shows the falsehood of their fabricators. 3. For the things which they have dared to say concerning the passion of the Saviour are put into the fourth consulship of Tiberius, which occurred in the seventh year of his reign; at which time it is plain that Pilate was not yet ruling in Judea, if the testimony of Josephus is to be believed, who clearly shows in the above-mentioned work that Pilate was made procurator of Judea by Tiberius in the twelfth year of his reign.

Eusebius. The History of the Church (p. 19). Kindle Edition.

So, Eusebius has labeled the 7th year Acts of Pilate crucifixion story a 'forgery'. Eusebius says, re his reading of Josephus, that Pilate was not in Judea in the 7th year of Tiberius. ( i.e. around 21 c.e.) He dates Pilate to the 12th year of Tiberius, 26 c.e. If, as suggested, it was not Eusebius but a scribe that interpolated the TF (whether or not overseen by Eusebius) why place the interpolation in a time slot already rejected by Eusebius. ? (i.e. a time slot prior to 26 c.e.) If the scribe made a mistake - and Eusebius failed to correct the mistake - then he would be viewed as guilty of the interpolation as the scribe.

The fact that the interpolator did not place his interpolated TF somewhere other than 19 c.e. suggests, not that he could not find a better place to put it - but that a core TF was already in place in the context of 19 c.e. Nikoa Kokkinos, for example, has a scenario where the Jesus crucifixion is dated to 36 c.e. and, reading the gospel crucifixion story into Josephus, has the Josephan figure of John killed in 35 c.e.

But when we look at the argument that an interpolator would not have placed it within that context because it would reflect negatively on Jesus, placing him alongside rebels and charlatans, we have to ask - where's the evidence that any Christian of the ancient or medieval period ever cared about that? Like many of the objections to the interpolation theory, I don't think we have any evidence that anyone ever made such an objection until the authenticity of the text came into question during the Reformation. I don't think the observation that the context reflected negatively on Jesus was ever made until it was used as defense of the theory of Josephan authorship.
Eusebius is the one who should have made the objection to placing an interpolated TF in a context of 19 c.e. Seemingly, he did not do so. Perhaps he, and other later writers, had no grounds on which to object to the 19 c.e. dating of the TF. Yes, he complained about the Acts of Pilate and it's 21 c.e. crucifixion dating - but his supposed interpolated TF in a context of 19 c.e. - did not remove the scenarios that placed a crucifixion prior to the 26 c.e. date for Pilate. In effect his supposed TF interpolation in 19 c.e., rather than achieving what he desired, continued to uphold the possibility of a pre 26 c.e. crucifixion story under Pilate.

The Josephan context of the TF, 19 c.e., does not necessitate, due to the civil unrest over the Roman standards and the tax over the water works - a negative TF. Josephus has also brought Germanous into the 19 c.e. history. Ant.18.2.5. By doing so providing an image of an extraordinary man:

It is generally agreed, that Germanicus possessed all the noblest endowments of body and mind in a higher degree than had ever before fallen to the lot of any man; a handsome person, extraordinary courage, great proficiency in eloquence and other branches of learning, both Greek and Roman; besides a singular humanity, and a behaviour so engaging, as to captivate the affections of all about him..............He was so extremely popular, that many authors tell us, the crowds of those who went to meet him upon his coming to any place, or to attend him at his departure, were so prodigious, that he was sometimes in danger of his life; and that upon his return from Germany, after he had quelled the mutiny in the army there, all the cohorts of the pretorian guards marched out to meet him, notwithstanding the order that only two should go; and that all the people of Rome, both men and women, of every age, sex, and rank, flocked as far as the twentieth mile-stone to attend his entrance.................At the time of his death, however, and afterwards, they displayed still greater and stronger proofs of their extraordinary attachment to him. The day on which he died, stones were thrown at the temples, the altars of the gods demolished, the household gods, in some cases, thrown into the streets, and new-born infants exposed. It is even said that barbarous nations, both those engaged in intestine wars, and those in hostilities against us, all agreed to a cessation of arms, as if they had been mourning for some very near and common friend; that some petty kings shaved their beards and their wives heads, in token of their extreme sorrow; and that the king of kings1 forbore his exercise of hunting and feasting with; his nobles, which, amongst the Parthians, is equivaleii to a cessation of all business in a time of public mourning with us.

C. Suetonius Tranquillus, Caligula


And so the people grieved the more bitterly as though Germanicus was again lost to them.

Triumphal arches were erected at Rome, on the banks of the Rhine, and on mount Amanus in Syria, with an inscription recording his achievements, and how he had died in the public service. A cenotaph was raised at Antioch, where the body was burnt, a lofty mound at Epidaphna, where he had ended his life. The number of his statues, or of the places in which they were honoured, could not easily be computed.

As to the body which, before it was burnt, lay bare in the forum at Antioch, its destined place of burial,

Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals 2.


If the mourning was spread geographically across the Empire, it was also spread in time. Tacitus, writing almost a century later, noted that at least some of the rituals and honours continued to be performed. In the early twentieth century, a document came to light on the very Eastern fringes of the Roman Empire at a place called Dura. It was a religious calendar likely dating from the AD 220s. This document, known as the Feriale Durarum (partial translation), is a religious calendar of a military unit stationed at Dura. Among the festive days to be recognised was the birth and death of Germanicus.

Death of Germanicus

https://ancientromanhistory31-14.com/ho ... ermanicus/

Such was the life and death of Germanicus. The Josephan TF is placed in the year of his death. A TF placed in the year of the death of Germanicus corresponds far more likely to be a positive not a negative correspondence to a TF placed in that year. A negative story about some Jews expelled from Rome in 19 c.e. can hardly be viewed as cancelling out the overwhelming Roman positive reaction to the life of Germanicus and the accolades according to him after his death.

The TF placed in the year of the death of Germanicus might not have had any appeal for Christians such as Eusebius. If the Jewish Josephus was finding some relevance to this Roman death and his TF story about a wise man crucified/executed by the Romans - then so be it. What did Christians have to gain from Jewish history. After all - did not the gospels say the Jews killed their Jesus. Perhaps, later, desperately seeking some historical witness to their Jesus, would the Jewish historian's interest between his people's history and the life and death of Germanicus be side aside - and the wise man story could then be christianized in a more familiar christian dress.

The question therefore is - what is Josephus remembering with his wise man crucified under Pilate in 19 c.e. What did the death of Germanicus bring to mind for a Hasmonean/Jewish historian? The mention of Antioch, as a place where the body of Germanicus lay in the forum, would remind this Hasmonean/Jewish historian of the execution of the last King and High Priest of the Jews executed at Antioch in 37 b.c.

''Dion Cassius says, 'Antony now gave the Kingdom to a certain Herod, and having stretched Antigonus on the cross and scourged him, which had never been done before to a king by the Romans, he put him to death'. The sympathies of the masses for the crucified king of Judah, the heroic son of so many heroic ancestors, and the legends growing, in time, out of this historical nucleus, became, perhaps, the source from which Paul and the evangelists preached Jesus as the crucified king of Judea.'' (History of the Hebrew's Second Commonwealth, 1880, Cincinnati, page 206)

Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900), scholar and novelist

http://collections.americanjewisharchiv ... wealth.pdf

Rome had it's sorrows over Germanicus in 19 c.e. Hasmonean Jews had their sorrows over Antigonus in 37 b.c. Two men, one in line to be the heir to Tiberius - the other the legitimate Hasmonean king of the Jews.

Germanicus

Josephus was a Hasmonean/Jewish historian. However much he knew Greek and perhaps played around with it's grammar - his foothold lay in his own people's history. Without taking that history on board the TF will remain a source of frustration for both the Jesus historicists and the Jesus ahistoricists. Both camps have a stake in the TF. Both sides need to put their arguments over Greek grammar aside and let the historical chips fall where they will......
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Ken Olson
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by Ken Olson »

This looks to me like Mary Helena is making speculative claims based on word associations that have a personal meaning to her. I'm having trouble seeing a coherent argument in here. If any current list member other than Mary Helena herself thinks she has made a good point somewhere in here that I have not addressed and thinks that I should respond to it, please quote that point and restate it in your own words (i.e., just quoting a block of text and leaving me to figure it out won't do).

Otherwise I'm inclined to ignore this.

Best,

Ken
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maryhelena
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by maryhelena »

Ken Olson wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 6:52 am This looks to me like Mary Helena is making speculative claims based on word associations that have a personal meaning to her. I'm having trouble seeing a coherent argument in here. If any current list member other than Mary Helena herself thinks she has made a good point somewhere in here that I have not addressed and thinks that I should respond to it, please quote that point and restate it in your own words (i.e., just quoting a block of text and leaving me to figure it out won't do).

Otherwise I'm inclined to ignore this.

Best,

Ken
I would think the gentlemanly way would be to ask the person responding to your post to clarify what you did not understand. I appreciate that you have an axe to grind in a debate over the TF. Having a published position requires you to support it. I don't find your position that Eusebius created the TF - and a scribe interpolated it into Antiquities - with or without Eusebius oversight - at all convincing. I find it an unreasonable position to hold because Eusebius has condemned the Acts of Pilate having a crucifixion story in 21 c.e. i.e. pre 26 c.e. Yet, seemingly, sanctioned a scribe placing an interpolated TF in a pre 26 c.e. time slot of 19 c.e. - a pre 26 c.e. time slot Eusebius has already rejected.
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

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Hi Ken,

I am going to read the Frans Dornseiff's article, Lukas der Schriftsteller.
Mit einem Anhang: Josephus und Tacitus.
that had persuaded Carlson.

He raises an objection against your argument that Tacitus didn't read Josephus by quoting Octavius of Minucius Felix:

Carefully read over their Scriptures, or if you are better pleased with the Roman writings, inquire concerning the Jews in the books (to say nothing of ancient documents) of Flavius Josephus or Antoninus Julianus, and you shall know that by their wickedness they deserved this fortune, and that nothing happened which had not before been predicted to them, if they should persevere in their obstinacy.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0410.htm

Hence the position of default is that any Roman would have preferred to read Josephus rather than other sources as Jewish scriptures. If the Josephus's fame was not declined in the time of Octavius (surely not for Christian attention about it), then even more so Josephus had to be useful in Tacitus's time, for a historian who would have liked a rapid resume on the Jewish affairs.
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Ken Olson
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by Ken Olson »

maryhelena wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 7:47 am I would think the gentlemanly way would be to ask the person responding to your post to clarify what you did not understand. I appreciate that you have an axe to grind in a debate over the TF. Having a published position requires you to support it. I don't find your position that Eusebius created the TF - and a scribe interpolated it into Antiquities - with or without Eusebius oversight - at all convincing. I find it an unreasonable position to hold because Eusebius has condemned the Acts of Pilate having a crucifixion story in 21 c.e. i.e. pre 26 c.e. Yet, seemingly, sanctioned a scribe placing an interpolated TF in a pre 26 c.e. time slot of 19 c.e. - a pre 26 c.e. time slot Eusebius has already rejected.
I understood that!

So let's go through how the 19 CE versus 26 CE argument would affect the theory that Eusebius wrote the Testimonium. In response to a question from David Hindley, I posted back in 2014 :
I'm aware that Daniel Schwartz ("Pontius Pilate's Appointment to Office,"in Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity 1992) and others have contested the dates of Pilate's tenure as given in the extant manuscripts of Josephus. I'm not yet convinced, but I don't dismiss the possibility either.
That's still where I am. Schwartz may well be right, but I'm not - yet - convinced he is. Your post assumes the theory that the Antiquities originally had Pilate taking office as governor of Judea in 19 CE. While I'm not yet convinced of that theory, it is entirely congenial to my theory of Eusebian authorship of the Testimonium, and, in fact, would tend to support it. If I accepted it as true, it would tip me toward thinking that the location in the text was probably (though not absolutely necessarily) chosen by Eusebius and not a later scribe.

In his more recent restatement (2013) of his case, Daniel Schwartz has argued that there are three possibilities:

(a) reject Josephus’ dating of Pilate so as to move the beginning of Pilate’s term
of office up to 19 CE;
(b) assume Pilate indeed began to serve in 26 CE and that Josephus placed these
stories several years too late, and then go on to wonder whether he erred out of ignorance
or, rather, deliberately misplaced these stories for some reason, such as the
desire to juxtapose these Roman cheats to his account of Jesus; or
(c) reread Josephus in a more general way, so that when he says the Roman events
happened “at this same time” he means not “the time of Pilate” but, rather, “the time
of Tiberius.” (Schwartz, Reading the First Century, 140)

Schwartz argues for (a), and he could be right, but I'm not yet convinced of it, considering a version of (c) to be plausible as well.

Schwartz is clear that the current form of the text of the Antiquities requires the 26 CE dating:

The usual reconstruction of Pilate’s
term of office as running 26–37 CE is based on three explicit Josephan data:
at Antiquities 18.33a he reports Tiberius’ accession to the imperial throne,
at § 33b we read that Valerius Gratus was appointed governor of Judea,
and § 35 reports that after eleven years in the governorship Gratus was
replaced by Pontius Pilate
. Given Tiberius’ accession to office in August
14, this would bring us down to 25 or 26 CE, depending upon how long we
imagine it took Tiberius to remove Gratus and appoint his replacement, and
how long it took the latter, Pilate, to arrive in Judea. Correspondingly, in
Antiquities 18.89 we read that Pilate served ten years, then (after suspension
from office) hurried to Rome but by the time he arrived Tiberius had died.
Tiberius died in March 37, which means that Pilate began to serve around
26 or 27 CE
. These two data, in § 35 and § 89, which fit one another well
insofar as they fill up Tiberius’ years as emperor (as is pointed out explicitly
in Ant. 18.177 as well76), are quite clear and unambiguous, but they are also
the only explicit evidence for dating Pilate’s entry into office as Gratus’
successor.

His case for re-dating Pilate's governorship is largely based on comparing events recorded in the Antiquities with events recorded by Tacitus and notes: "without Tacitus we might not think twice about this data" (141). For his theory of a 19 CE dating to work, Schwartz needs to explain how those two pieces of data clearly and unambiguously pointing to 26 CE as the the time Pilate came to be in the text of the Antiquities, and he undertakes 'to see whether there was any good reason for a copyist of Josephus to want to make Pilate begin governing later than he really did' (140).

He finds that, in fact, there is a motive for copyists to have altered the text in such a way:

The third question, whether any copyists had anything to gain by
making Pilate’s career begin later than it really did, has led scholars to
notice, and to bring into the present discussion, the fact that the Church
father Eusebius reports in his Church History (Book 1, Ch. 9) that there
was circulating, in his day (the early fourth century), an anti-Christian text

purporting, so it seems, to be Pilate’s report to Tiberius about the case of
Jesus. Eusebius argues that those so-called Acta Pilati must be false since
they date the report to Tiberius’ fourth consulate, which came in 21 CE –
five years before Pilate in fact entered into office, according to Josephus.

However, since it is difficult to believe that forgers of such Acta Pilati would
choose a date so easily refutable on the basis of the main relevant source, it
may well be that their copy of Antiquities did not include the chronological
data in Antiquities 18.35, 89. The fact that Eusebius read the Testimonium
Flavianum in his copy of Antiquities
, whereas a century earlier Origen apparently
did not, makes it all the more likely that also the chronological data
in Eusebius’ copy of Josephus, and hence in our texts, were the contribution
of creative Christian copyist
s. 81 (Schwartz, 142).

So Schwartz thinks, based on the testimony of Eusebius HE 1.9 (Eusebius later specifies they were circulated on the orders of the emperor Maximin in HE 9.4- 9.5.1), that the data that clearly support the 26 CE dating for the beginning of Pilate's governorship were interpolated into the text of the Antiquities by some Christian responding to the pagan Acts of Pilate, which circulated in Eusebius' day, in order to invalidate the dating of those Acts of Pilate, as, indeed, Eusebius used them to do.

So who could have carried out the interpolation into the Antiquities of the data requiring the CE 26 date for Pilate which Schwartz hypothesizes and which quotes he Eusebius using to refute the Acts of Pilate? We should look for a Christian writer of Eusebius day, someone who was active between the reign of emperor Maximin and the time Eusebius used the Antiquities to refute the Acts of Pilate. Someone who knew Josephus Antiquities fairly well and saw the apologetic potential of using Josephus to refute the Acts of Pilate, and preferably someone who oversaw a Christian scriptorium capable of copying that data into multiple copies of the Antiquities.

Who could that be?

There is one further argument that might be pointed out. If Schwartz is correct that the data requiring a 26 CE date for the beginning of Pilate's governorship was inserted into the Antiquities for the specific purpose of refuting the dating of the pagan Acts of Pilate, is it likely that the person responsible for the insertion made no mention of the fact that it did, and just hoped that future readers might stumble across the Antiquities and realize that its dating contradicted that of the Acts of Pilate, or is it more likely the person responsible for the insertion would want to make sure that people knew that the Antiquities contradicted the Acts of Pilate and publicize the fact in some manner?

I see no contradiction at all between Eusebius having composed the Testimonium Flavianum for his earlier work and then using it to refute the pagan Acts of Pilate in the HE and overseeing the insertion of the version from the HE into its current location in the text of the Antiquities.

Best wishes,

Ken
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by maryhelena »

Ken Olson wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:16 am
maryhelena wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 7:47 am I would think the gentlemanly way would be to ask the person responding to your post to clarify what you did not understand. I appreciate that you have an axe to grind in a debate over the TF. Having a published position requires you to support it. I don't find your position that Eusebius created the TF - and a scribe interpolated it into Antiquities - with or without Eusebius oversight - at all convincing. I find it an unreasonable position to hold because Eusebius has condemned the Acts of Pilate having a crucifixion story in 21 c.e. i.e. pre 26 c.e. Yet, seemingly, sanctioned a scribe placing an interpolated TF in a pre 26 c.e. time slot of 19 c.e. - a pre 26 c.e. time slot Eusebius has already rejected.
I understood that!
And yet you wrote - 'I'm having trouble seeing a coherent argument in here.'.... :banghead:

So let's go through how the 19 CE versus 26 CE argument would affect the theory that Eusebius wrote the Testimonium. In response to a question from David Hindley, I posted back in 2014 :
I'm aware that Daniel Schwartz ("Pontius Pilate's Appointment to Office,"in Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity 1992) and others have contested the dates of Pilate's tenure as given in the extant manuscripts of Josephus. I'm not yet convinced, but I don't dismiss the possibility either.
That's still where I am. Schwartz may well be right, but I'm not - yet - convinced he is. Your post assumes the theory that the Antiquities originally had Pilate taking office as governor of Judea in 19 CE. While I'm not yet convinced of that theory, it is entirely congenial to my theory of Eusebian authorship of the Testimonium, and, in fact, would tend to support it. If I accepted it as true, it would tip me toward thinking that the location in the text was probably (though not absolutely necessarily) chosen by Eusebius and not a later scribe.
The dating of Pilate to 18/19 c.e. is the weak point, in fact the Achilles Heel, of your Eusebius and the TF theory.

In his more recent restatement (2013) of his case, Daniel Schwartz has argued that there are three possibilities:

(a) reject Josephus’ dating of Pilate so as to move the beginning of Pilate’s term
of office up to 19 CE;
(b) assume Pilate indeed began to serve in 26 CE and that Josephus placed these
stories several years too late, and then go on to wonder whether he erred out of ignorance
or, rather, deliberately misplaced these stories for some reason, such as the
desire to juxtapose these Roman cheats to his account of Jesus; or
(c) reread Josephus in a more general way, so that when he says the Roman events
happened “at this same time” he means not “the time of Pilate” but, rather, “the time
of Tiberius.” (Schwartz, Reading the First Century, 140)

Schwartz argues for (a), and he could be right, but I'm not yet convinced of it, considering a version of (c) to be plausible as well.

Schwartz is clear that the current form of the text of the Antiquities requires the 26 CE dating:

The usual reconstruction of Pilate’s
term of office as running 26–37 CE is based on three explicit Josephan data:
at Antiquities 18.33a he reports Tiberius’ accession to the imperial throne,
at § 33b we read that Valerius Gratus was appointed governor of Judea,
and § 35 reports that after eleven years in the governorship Gratus was
replaced by Pontius Pilate
. Given Tiberius’ accession to office in August
14, this would bring us down to 25 or 26 CE, depending upon how long we
imagine it took Tiberius to remove Gratus and appoint his replacement, and
how long it took the latter, Pilate, to arrive in Judea. Correspondingly, in
Antiquities 18.89 we read that Pilate served ten years, then (after suspension
from office) hurried to Rome but by the time he arrived Tiberius had died.
Tiberius died in March 37, which means that Pilate began to serve around
26 or 27 CE
. These two data, in § 35 and § 89, which fit one another well
insofar as they fill up Tiberius’ years as emperor (as is pointed out explicitly
in Ant. 18.177 as well76), are quite clear and unambiguous, but they are also
the only explicit evidence for dating Pilate’s entry into office as Gratus’
successor.


His case for re-dating Pilate's governorship is largely based on comparing events recorded in the Antiquities with events recorded by Tacitus and notes: "without Tacitus we might not think twice about this data" (141). For his theory of a 19 CE dating to work, Schwartz needs to explain how those two pieces of data clearly and unambiguously pointing to 26 CE as the the time Pilate came to be in the text of the Antiquities, and he undertakes 'to see whether there was any good reason for a copyist of Josephus to want to make Pilate begin governing later than he really did' (140).

He finds that, in fact, there is a motive for copyists to have altered the text in such a way:

The third question, whether any copyists had anything to gain by
making Pilate’s career begin later than it really did, has led scholars to
notice, and to bring into the present discussion, the fact that the Church
father Eusebius reports in his Church History (Book 1, Ch. 9) that there
was circulating, in his day (the early fourth century), an anti-Christian text

purporting, so it seems, to be Pilate’s report to Tiberius about the case of
Jesus. Eusebius argues that those so-called Acta Pilati must be false since
they date the report to Tiberius’ fourth consulate, which came in 21 CE –
five years before Pilate in fact entered into office, according to Josephus.

However, since it is difficult to believe that forgers of such Acta Pilati would
choose a date so easily refutable on the basis of the main relevant source, it
may well be that their copy of Antiquities did not include the chronological
data in Antiquities 18.35, 89. The fact that Eusebius read the Testimonium
Flavianum in his copy of Antiquities
, whereas a century earlier Origen apparently
did not, makes it all the more likely that also the chronological data
in Eusebius’ copy of Josephus, and hence in our texts, were the contribution
of creative Christian copyist
s. 81 (Schwartz, 142).



So Schwartz thinks, based on the testimony of Eusebius HE 1.9 (Eusebius later specifies they were circulated on the orders of the emperor Maximin in HE 9.4- 9.5.1), that the data that clearly support the 26 CE dating for the beginning of Pilate's governorship were interpolated into the text of the Antiquities by some Christian responding to the pagan Acts of Pilate, which circulated in Eusebius' day, in order to invalidate the dating of those Acts of Pilate, as, indeed, Eusebius used them to do.

So who could have carried out the interpolation into the Antiquities of the data requiring the CE 26 date for Pilate which Schwartz hypothesizes and which quotes he Eusebius using to refute the Acts of Pilate? We should look for a Christian writer of Eusebius day, someone who was active between the reign of emperor Maximin and the time Eusebius used the Antiquities to refute the Acts of Pilate. Someone who knew Josephus Antiquities fairly well and saw the apologetic potential of using Josephus to refute the Acts of Pilate, and preferably someone who oversaw a Christian scriptorium capable of copying that data into multiple copies of the Antiquities.

Who could that be?
Follow the money as they say......the writer who had everything to gain by having Pilate's career begin later is the writer of gLuke. Without Pilate dated to 26 c.e. gLuke could not be written. Did Luke interpolate Josephus with the 26 c.e. chronology - or did Josephus accommodate gLuke's chronology by moving Pilate to 26 c.e. That's the question that should be on the table.

There is one further argument that might be pointed out. If Schwartz is correct that the data requiring a 26 CE date for the beginning of Pilate's governorship was inserted into the Antiquities for the specific purpose of refuting the dating of the pagan Acts of Pilate, is it likely that the person responsible for the insertion made no mention of the fact that it did, and just hoped that future readers might stumble across the Antiquities and realize that its dating contradicted that of the Acts of Pilate, or is it more likely the person responsible for the insertion would want to make sure that people knew that the Antiquities contradicted the Acts of Pilate and publicize the fact in some manner?
The writer of gLuke needed to move away from the chronology in the Acts of Pilate - hence required Pilate to be moved to 26 c.e. - and Josephus enabled that to be accomplished.

I see no contradiction at all between Eusebius having composed the Testimonium Flavianum for his earlier work and then using it to refute the pagan Acts of Pilate in the HE and overseeing the insertion of the version from the HE into its current location in the text of the Antiquities.
The Acts of Pilate 21 c.e. crucifixion story was refuted long before Eusebius - the gLuke writer had a helping hand in Josephus.

As Daniel Schwartz so wisely wrote re all the controversy over dating Pilate:

Pursuing these avenues of research will contribute to our certainty as
to when Pilate became governor of Judea. Some will care about this,
others might not. What is clear, however, is that even those who don’t want
“merely” to “mine” Josephus for “facts” should realize that it was only
the external pressure, of Tacitus, that forced scholars to read Josephus with
eyes that allowed them to see all there is to see. Those who read Josephus
all by himself will never know, for example, that Germanicus died in 19 CE
(a point that is quite clear in Tacitus’ annalistic narrative [see n. 75] but
not at all indicated by Josephus), hence never have the occasion to wonder
why Josephus juxtaposed that death with the beginning of Pilate’s tenure,
something that apparently contradicts Josephus’ dating of that tenure – a
point which we may pursue as we like, whether to learn more about Pilate
or, rather, more about Josephus. Page 144.

It's Josephus that needs examination - Eusebius is simply a Johnny-come-lately......
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Ken Olson
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by Ken Olson »

Giuseppe wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 8:14 am Hi Ken,

I am going to read the Frans Dornseiff's article, Lukas der Schriftsteller.
Mit einem Anhang: Josephus und Tacitus.
that had persuaded Carlson.

He raises an objection against your argument that Tacitus didn't read Josephus by quoting Octavius of Minucius Felix:

Carefully read over their Scriptures, or if you are better pleased with the Roman writings, inquire concerning the Jews in the books (to say nothing of ancient documents) of Flavius Josephus or Antoninus Julianus, and you shall know that by their wickedness they deserved this fortune, and that nothing happened which had not before been predicted to them, if they should persevere in their obstinacy.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0410.htm

Hence the position of default is that any Roman would have preferred to read Josephus rather than other sources as Jewish scriptures. If the Josephus's fame was not declined in the time of Octavius (surely not for Christian attention about it), then even more so Josephus had to be useful in Tacitus's time, for a historian who would have liked a rapid resume on the Jewish affairs.
That is a very weak argument. You are arguing that, because a Christian apologist from the second half of the second or the first half of the third century refers to Josephus that a pagan Roman writer writing at the beginning of the second century must have know him because, you posit, Josephus fame must have been greatest at the time he wrote and uniformly declined after that. How do you know that Josephus works weren't better known among Christian apologists c. 200 than among Latin pagan authors c. 110?

That Tacitus, or some other Roman hypothesized by Minucius felix, might theoretically have preferred reading Josephus to the Jewish Scriptures does not mean that he read either. This is a challenge issued by the character Octavius to a pagan dialogue partner in a later Christian apologetic dialogue, not a statement of favorite pagan Roman reading practices at the beginning of the second century.

And you haven't answered the objection that if he bothered to read Josephus' Antiquities, he doesn't seem to take advantage of it elsewhere, such as in his account of Jewish origins. Carlson's theory that he used a servant as a research assistant who just extracted the material about Chrestus was meant to answer that objection.

Michael Hardwick, in Josephus as a Historical Source In Patristic Literature Through Eusebius (1989) suggests that Minucius had not actually read Josephus himself, but was merely invoking his name (p. 23) and we know nothing of a work by Antonius Julianus other than this reference from the Octavius, though must scholars assume him to be the Marcus Antonius Julianus who was governor of Judea during the Jewish War of 66-70.

Best

Ken

PS I'm not fond of the ANF translation here. The Latin text and Loeb translation:

Scripta eorum relege, vel, ut transeamus veteres, Flavi Iosephi, vel, si Romanis magis gaudes, Antoni Iuliani de Iudaeis require: iam scies, nequitia sua hanc eos meruisse fortunam, nec quidquam accidisse quod non sit his, si in contumacia perseverarent, ante praedictum. Ita prius eos deseruisse conprehendes quam esse desertos nec, ut impie loqueris, cum deo suo captos, sed a deo ut disciplinae transfugas dedito.

Read their own writings, or omitting the ancients, turn to Flavius Josephus, or, if you prefer the Romans, consult Antonius Julianus on the Jews, and you will see it was their own wickedness which brought them to misfortune, and that nothing that happened to them which was not predicted in advance if they persisted in rebelliousness.
Last edited by Ken Olson on Mon Oct 25, 2021 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Dave Allen: an analysis

Post by neilgodfrey »

Ken Olson wrote: Mon Oct 25, 2021 3:52 pm Michael Hardwood, in Josephus as a Historical Source In Patristic Literature Through Eusebius (1989)
For those interested in following up Hardwick's book is available at https://archive.org/details/josephusashistor0000hard
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