Ken Olson wrote: ↑Sun Jun 19, 2022 8:50 am
I'm a bit behind in my postings, and I hope I''ll be able to write out in full what I think is going on with the two passages about James that Eusebius ascribes to Josephus and why only one of them is found in our manuscripts of the Antiquities. I've discussed the issue several different in various online forums (including this one) and should really post the full treatment on my blog so I can just refer people there.
In the meantime, however, Jacob Berman has just posted a video in which I discuss the James passage in Josephus on his History Valley YouTube site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa98WOqz06Y
Best,
Ken
Thank you for that link. I enjoyed the interview and learned from it.
If I may offer an alternative (or supplementary) possiblility for Origen's testimony about the James trial... by and large, what Origen recalls from
Antiquities is similar to material actually found in the received Boox XX of the
Antiquities. In particular, Josephus does attibute the destruction of Jerusalem to God's retribution for murders other than the murder of Jesus, BUT not for the murder of James, either.
https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/201 ... o-do-that/
In the interview, you mentioned having recently misattributed something in another interview. If I understood you, then you correctly described the content, but erred in naming the author. That's a common kind of error, and I happily confess I've done it myself, and probably worse than you (One time in an online forum, I erroneously credited a famous line of 20th Century poetry to Shakespeare. Ouch.)
Origen's error, IMO, is the mirror image: having the author correct, but mashing up the content. A modern example is Bart Ehrman's notiorious Letter X from Pliny to Trajan. There is no question that Ehrman had read the Pliny-Trajan correspondence, but remembered it inaccurately, yet not entirely haphazardly, either. Fire brigades and secret religious cults were both matters of concern to Roman authority, and both were subjects in the correspondence, but not in the same letter.
Ehrman thus made connections that were not on the page. He also created new features semantically related to elements in his source, but not actually found there (wild fires burning through the countryside ... no, it was a single urban fire, BUT in the other letter, Christianity was running rampant through the countryside).
Obviously, whatever else Ehrman knew about the subject influenced his recollection. Similarly, claiming that Origen misremembered Josephus should not be interpreted as saying that Origen's exposure to Christian sources about James (like Hegesippus or maybe Clement) played no role in the resulting hash.
Apart from possibly explaining Origen's testimony, the presence of this material in Book XX suggests something about Eusebius as a witness. In looking for the location of the James trial, it is somewhat likely that he encountered and was reminded of Josephus's actual discussion of God and the destruction of Jerusalem.
So, yes, it would be one thing if Eusebius simply took Origen's word for what Josephus had written about the role of God's vengeance in the fate of the Temple, even though he couldn't find it, and then went on to quote what he did find. It is a different thing, however, if he took Origen's word for it against a text where Josephus gave a different reason for God ordaining the destruction of Jerusalem, and yet Eusebius said nothing about it.