TF language issues

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: TF language issues

Post by Ken Olson »

This is another image of the Testimonium from manuscript M (Ambrosianus). Hopefully it's a bit clearer.

Best,

Ken
Testimonium - Manuscript M.png
Testimonium - Manuscript M.png (165.97 KiB) Viewed 1626 times
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mlinssen
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Re: TF language issues

Post by mlinssen »

Ken Olson wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:43 pm Testimonium - Codex Vossianus Gr. 72 - Robert Eisler - The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (1931) Pate VIII between pages 68-69.png

Here's another image of the Testimonium from Eisler's book (Plate VIII between pages 68 and 69). This is from Codex Vossianus Gr. 72. This version of the TF is generally not used by text critics to reconstruct the hypothetical original because it's been interpolated into a manuscript of the Jewish War, so it's useless for establishing the genealogy of the text. However, it is interesting if what you're intrested in is scribal habits and nomina sacra. (The TF is above the crossed out passage).

Best,

Ken
Amazing Ken, I've been looking for these for quite a bit - my gratitude is enormous

This text shows all the traits of scribal habits: the diaresis on the u, the i - the previous one has a line ending Nu, but I'm not used to these hands, they're so late in comparison to what I usually get to

Likewise, however, τῶν Χριστιανῶν here as well - and I can see a IU XU in the margin, so again we have a ligature for our protagonist versus a description for his alleged followers in full, with an i even.
And this would indeed make Josephus best the Patristics to it - no matter how you spin this (LOL!) this is something extraordinary
τῶν Χριστιανῶν again in Josephus (War)
τῶν Χριστιανῶν again in Josephus (War)
20220124 Josephus_Christians-2.jpg (965.92 KiB) Viewed 1618 times
The answer to the order of texts lies in the scribal notation. I'm working on these with someone else and have incorporated some in my Thomas Commentary - there is even verbatim agreement between Coptic and Greek Thomas regarding the apostrophe in sAB'BAth, Thomas's joke of logion 27 on making the Sabbath into "Fathers day" (or not seeing the Father otherwise).
It is absolutely astonishing what gets copied across, for centuries, between the various texts, Coptic (or Chrestian) as well as Greek (or Christian).
Yet this right here? Most remarkable
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mlinssen
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Re: TF language issues

Post by mlinssen »

The diacritics are a thing on their own, of course: none of those in any text up to 5th / 6th CE, top of my head. Which attests to nothing but an eager scribe adding them to a text that doesn't have them - which in turn attests to an eager scribe (wink wink nudge nudge say no more)

Yet it is out of the question that these would be literal copies of anything dating to the first centuries CE - absolutely irrefutable that such is not the case, these are "made contemporary" to say the very, very least; whereas the preservation of the scribal traits such as the diareses and the line ending Nu would suggest that they are from early material. Again, I have no markers for when each of these begins and ends, that is a mountain of work, although it's obvious for instance that the Latin text of Bezae has very, very little of them (which is no surprise, of course)

Exciting stuff, Ken. And thanks again spin, these are the threads that make it all worthwhile: true, factual, objective research right on top of the manuscripts themselves, stripped from all possible layers of obfuscation such as "translation"
Last edited by mlinssen on Sun Jan 23, 2022 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mlinssen
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Re: TF language issues

Post by mlinssen »

Well, learned something new. Guess where the Codex Vossianus is located?

Right next door to me

I guess I'll be paying a visit to Special Collections tomorrow
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Re: TF language issues

Post by mlinssen »

Ken Olson wrote: Sun Jan 23, 2022 2:45 pm This is an image of the Testimonium from Codex Ambrosianus (usually called Manuscript M for Milan), the earliest Greek manuscript (11th century) containing the relevant section of Book XVIII of the Antiquities.

Testimonium Flavianum from Codex Ambrosianus (M) - Robert Eisler - The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (1931) - Plate V .png

This from Plate V, between pages 58 and 59 of Robert Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist (1931). You can download the whole book here:

http://www.christianjewishlibrary.org/P ... hJesus.pdf

Best,

Ken
Well, I finally managed to read that in full, thanks to the very handy transcription plus explanation by spin - it is terrible handwriting to me, the first time I've seen something like this, and I'm really only used to Coptic and Christian 2nd-6th CE, round and about. This definitely seems to be 11th/12th from what I could quickly piece together

There are a few scribal variables here, in this first plate:
  1. Line ending Nu in τὸν χρόνο(ν)
  2. ᾿Ιησοῦς written in full
  3. Line ending Nu in ἀνθρώπω(ν)
  4. χς as a ligature with what seems to be a single superlinear on the last letter
  5. Χριστιανῶν written in full
1) and 3) appear in the earliest MSS, including Thomas (who according to me is the earliest MSS to all of them) and I have no idea when it stops but 6th CE shows them in abundance

2) is exceptional, and only appears in P72 (3rd / 4th CE tnx Lane!) uniquely, and I haven't gone beyond 6th CE Christian MSS but it only appears once in all of the NHL, in the first remaining lines to Melchizedek, and I guesstimate those to 2nd-4th CE, and the trick to it all is that Thomas being the earliest, if he dates to e.g. 0 or 100 CE, or perhaps even before that, then the Coptic MSS move up along with that, as that's where it all started and Chrestianity developed, at least a century or even two, or three, before Christianity took over, which was well before they started the rebranding which likely didn't happen until Constantine - but I digress

4) appears as such in most if not all Christian MSS, and for a complete overview of the NHL, check either

https://www.academia.edu/62646507/ChrEs ... di_Library

or

viewtopic.php?p=129136#p129136

Long story short: this appears in early MSS, Coptic as well as Christian, and most certainly is still present in 6th CE although the Coptic MSS beat the Christian ones well to it, by one or even a few centuries, for being the first to use xrhstos, and Philip is the only one to use xristos as well - in his story of xrhstians becoming xristians

5) is unheard of and only appears in Acts and 1 Peter, see

viewtopic.php?p=131716#p131716

or

viewtopic.php?p=131607#p131607 (antixreistos and xreistos in Vaticanus)

viewtopic.php?p=131608#p131608 (antixrhstos! and xristos! in Sinaiticus)

viewtopic.php?p=131609#p131609 (xreistos in Bezae, only one extant sample for all)

Now then.
1) and 3) give a post quem of 2nd CE, which is moved up by half a century or more by 4) - let's just stick to the currently agreed upon consensus that the earliest texts don't appear until well into the 2nd CE, those are the dates that we have via the extant MSS, and everything else is propaganda (or, as I learned earlier today, "non-mythicism" and even "historicism")
2) is most exceptional, as is 5), and having these at all in full, in a Greek and thus Christian MS above all, takes us straight into 4th - 6th CE: 3rd / 4th CE for P72 and 4th / 6th CE for Bezae, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
When we then consider that both of these say Christ instead of any combination of Christ, Chrest and Chreist, then we are in 7th CE perhaps, meaning that we have gone beyond Bezae, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (and we're still looking for Ihsous to start making regular appearances!)
And if we then observe that this is an outside text, we can be very generous and say that it must be at least 8th CE, or we can be stingy and stick to 9th or even 10th CE

This fragment alone, right here, taking into account every single letter that it contains, is guaranteed to be a forgery - that is simply impossible to contest, although I'll be very nice to everyone who tries, as usual, as long as they stick to the topic and the points put forward, and not go off rambling about irrelevant pet projects of their own or worse, pull a feindly ogre. Or pull a hannes and continuously whine about how continuously mean I have been to them without coming to the point themselves.
I'm not a bully, I just don't like to waste my time

Spin, Ken, what a marvelous piece of work. Really wonderful, thank you very much again. I've always wanted to lay my hands on a Josephus MSS and was slightly eager to see what that TF really was all about, and now I have. I understand there are more MSS like these, so we'll see where it ends

But textual criticism tells me that this one is done and dusted - and of course it is possible that it was genuine yet that something went amiss while transcribing, an over eager scribe, blah blah, sure. Apologies for the apologetics of the apologists, that's what they're here for, correct? To prevent conclusions from being reached in order that decisions are refrained from being made, and everything remains in the dark obscurity of Christianity as we know it: it's okay that none of it can be proven as long as none of it can be debunked either, right? Lest we must confess and turn in our sock puppet on a stick
andrewcriddle
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Re: TF language issues

Post by andrewcriddle »

I may be misunderstanding the argument here but surely the original Septuagint before it was Christianized used Xristos in the full form and not as an abbreviation e.g. when translating Messiah as a title of the Davidic king ?
This usage would be earlier than Josephus.

I'm not sure if other posters are disagreeing with my claim about the original Septuagint usage or whether they regard it as irrelevant.

Andrew Criddle
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mlinssen
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Re: TF language issues

Post by mlinssen »

andrewcriddle wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:04 am I may be misunderstanding the argument here but surely the original Septuagint before it was Christianized used Xristos in the full form and not as an abbreviation e.g. when translating Messiah as a title of the Davidic king ?
This usage would be earlier than Josephus.

I'm not sure if other posters are disagreeing with my claim about the original Septuagint usage or whether they regard it as irrelevant.

Andrew Criddle
If you have a manuscript to go with that I'd be sincerely delighted andrew - verifiable facts are all that matter. I know the ihsous in one MS, that of Joshua, but all I have is the transcription and it's supposedly only in the front page. There's a recent post to that out here and I'll look it up later
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Re: TF language issues

Post by andrewcriddle »

mlinssen wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:17 am
andrewcriddle wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:04 am I may be misunderstanding the argument here but surely the original Septuagint before it was Christianized used Xristos in the full form and not as an abbreviation e.g. when translating Messiah as a title of the Davidic king ?
This usage would be earlier than Josephus.

I'm not sure if other posters are disagreeing with my claim about the original Septuagint usage or whether they regard it as irrelevant.

Andrew Criddle
If you have a manuscript to go with that I'd be sincerely delighted andrew - verifiable facts are all that matter. I know the ihsous in one MS, that of Joshua, but all I have is the transcription and it's supposedly only in the front page. There's a recent post to that out here and I'll look it up later
Whether or not any surviving manuscript support my claim it is still highly likely. Are you suggesting that the original Septuagint used nomina sacra ?

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mlinssen
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Re: TF language issues

Post by mlinssen »

andrewcriddle wrote: Wed Jan 26, 2022 10:25 am Whether or not any surviving manuscript support my claim it is still highly likely. Are you suggesting that the original Septuagint used nomina sacra ?

Andrew Criddle
"Highly likely" is not very convincing really, and I'll just take it that you can't substantiate your claim, given the fact that you don't even know whether there is a manuscript that would support it, which can only mean that you have never even seen one

I don't really care about the Septuagint in this matter, I don't see any relevance to it given the topic of Testimonium Flavium

I hope you acknowledge the relevance of extant manuscripts in the light of my findings in viewtopic.php?p=131969#p131969

We can allege, assume, "find highly likely" and "surely" "claim" anything we want, but that is nothing but voicing unsubstantiated opinions, and we could even find like-minded people who do the same and point to them as "supporters" of our case, and with a lot of time having passed in impasse those could even form a "majority consensus" to point to, but the truth of the matter is that I'm sick and tired of all that bullshit really
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Jax
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Re: TF language issues

Post by Jax »

Where there not copies of the Greek LXX in the caves at Qumran? If so I would think they would be unlikely to have the NS. Is any of this available online?
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