Greetings, Ken
I am happy to report that the republic seems to have survived my marginal participation in yesterday's election. Thank you for your patience with the delay.
Ken Olson wrote: ↑Mon Sep 12, 2022 7:54 pm
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Two points here. They're not necessarily probative for the authenticity of the James passage, by may conribute to how we think about what Eusebius is up to and how he uses his sources.
Fine.
(1) I don't think there was a garden-variety 'would they die for a lie?' argument before Eusebius. I think he's the originator of the argument (or he planted the garden), as discussed previously in this thread from 2017:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3366
Like most of Eusebius's ideas, we find the seed for it in Origen:
Even if it were the case that nobody used the argument before Eusebius, that would not change its character. But we would seem to agree that Origen writes
Will Celsus have the former to be true, but the latter, although recorded by eye-witnesses who showed by their acts that they clearly understood the nature of what they had seen, and who manifested their state of mind by what they cheerfully underwent for the sake of His Gospel, to be inventions?
That's all there is to the argument, directly and economically expressed.
Eusebius devotes more words to the argument than Origen, but Origen has a specific opponent in mind with whom he has been carrying on a virtual dialog when we reach the bolded statement. Therefore, Origen enjoys a context in which he need not specify yet again which "eye-witnesses" he is talking about.
In contrast, Eusebius, talking to himself as it were, makes his list (he is, after all, famous for his lists). He indulges in more rhetorical ornamentation than Origen, but the two apologists are nearly tied for the meager amount of evidence each offers for their shared fact claim that individuals qualified to know first-hand the truth of the Christian narrative died as a result of clinging to that truth.
(2) While James may be one among others who died for the lie, if his death were reported in Josephus, who Eusebius likes to cite in the DE as an outside source to back up his Christian sources, his omission here is at least a little bit odd.
There's no arguing about tastes. I admire the rhetorical focus of a guy sticking to the argument he has chosen to offer here and now, while allowing Josephus to have his (corrupted) say elsewhere. You don't see it that way. Fair enough.
'For all we know ... that much is true?' This seems awfully credulous.
Why credulous? The American idiom doesn't pretend to prove the applicable fact claim. In context, we have Jerome's unrebutted testimony (acknowledged to be subject to interpretation) about what sources support Jerome's story about James. The idiom in no way rules out that Jerome may be mistaken or that his presentation of what he recalls about Clement and Josephus depends on his agreement with Eusebius about those earlier authors.
We seem to agree that Jerome has acknowledged his general debt to Eusebius in the preface (If I can all it that) of the book.
Alice Whealey thinks Jerome is taking the Testimonium Flavianum from Eusebius HE (one of the places I agree with her).
I have no problem with that.
I think the statement allegedly from Josephus, but actually probably from Origen, about James' reputation for sanctity that the downfall of Jerusalem was believed to be on account of his death, signals a shift from reliance on Eusebius to inclusion of other sources.
There are two distinct claims, both found in Origen, both supposedly according to Josephus. (1) James's death caused the fall. (2) Unspecified people other than Josephus believed (1) to be true. I found it interesting that Jerome chose (2).
I agree that that could be described as inclusion, even engagement with, sources other than Eusebius.
But why do you think his source for what he says about Hegesippus, Clement or Josephus (barring the one statement he takes from Origen) is anything but Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, book II? Why think Jerome is verifying Eusebius references rather than just relying on Eusebius?
That doesn't sound much like what I think. It is clear to me that Jerome does sometimes rely on his unverified memory, and his embrace of
EH may be nothing more than agreement between it and what he remembers of other works. On the other hand, his memory isn't necessarily always wrong, and I simply don't know (and don't know any way to find out) what, if anything, Jerome may have checked afresh or recently before he wrote.
(I think that that also covers your clarification post.
I'll add that in general, if two incompatible hypotheses "approximate" each other, have similar observable consequences, then it usually requires lots of high quality evidence to distinguish between them with confidence. Taking an intermediate source second-hand and having an independent recollection which agrees with the intermediate source approximate each other. IMO, the amount and quality of potentially distinguishing evidence are poor.)