Josephus Antiquities via Caesaria-what about Rome too

[StephenGoranson]

Third try.
Chrissy Hansen wrote, in part, Mon Jul 29, 2024 5:32 am, about Josephus Antiquities manuscripts:

"...All Greek manuscripts come from the same family, and probably from a library in Caesarea, where Eusebius worked...."

Josephus wrote also to those in Rome.
There must, I suppose, have been several Antiquities manuscripts in Rome.
Perhaps I will need to wait to read about that more in forthcoming New Testament Studies (where, on a different subject, I also published a small piece).

[StephenGoranson]

Rome had libraries and private collections.
All gone? Possible. Also, convenient?

[StephenGoranson]

"...we know for a fact that they used his [Eusebius'] writings as a basis for interpolations..."

Oh, I didn't know that "fact."

[StephenGoranson]

To be clear, I am not arguing here that the TF is necessarily reliable,
but that your presentation is not.

[MrMacSon]

"...we know for a fact that they used his [Eusebius'] writings as a basis for interpolations..."

Oh, I didn't know that "fact."

Well, the next paragraph of Chrissy's post seems to present the relevant fact/s:
("Latin Jerome's" reversed to 'Jerome's Latin')

For instance, the Latin Translation of Antiquities by Cassiodorus' group cribbed their TF from Rufinus' Latin translation of Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica. Likewise, the Greek translation of Jerome's De Viris Illustribus stole its TF from the Greek version in Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica (we know this because they have "he was the Christ" and not Jerome's Latin "he was believed to be the Christ"). Likewise, *every* quotation of it in Syriac, Latin, and Greek speaking writers comes from Eusebius (as I demonstrated). So, yeah, actually it is very likely the non-Eusebian manuscripts were made to conform to Eusebius as they were copied.

... All Greek manuscripts we have are from the same text family, and, as a result, need only have a single altered exemplar to explain our data

---

I want to briefly pursue an aspect of this (from the same post):

... it may well be that later Roman manuscripts of Antiquities were made to cohere with Eusebius' version

and, previously

... Eusebius' writings became popular throughout the Roman Empire, and we know for a fact that they used his writings as a basis for interpolations

iiuc, all significant 'Roman Empire' after Eusebius (= after Constantine) <=> Greek Byzantine empire, right (??) ...

... the western [aspect of the] Roman empire started deteriorating from ~270 CE or so: they began to move the 'capital' away from Rome - to places in Bythnia & Pontus - from around that time or shortly after (maybe the 280s; including to, iirc/iuic, Nicomedia, Nicea and other places, before settling on what was then known as Byzantium).

• But the 'western Roman empire' didn't fully or finally 'fall' until the early 5th century.

• Which raises the question: did it ever come back? If so, when?

• What, if anything, has been documented of this —

  Rome was also burned and ransacked multiple times

  — after, say, 250 CE ?? (to, say, 600 CE ?)

[Ken Olson]

• What, if anything, has been documented of this —

  Rome was also burned and ransacked multiple times

  — after, say, 250 CE ?? (to, say, 600 CE ?)

I'll try to answer this, though I'm not sure how relevant it is.

Rome was sacked by the Visigoths under Alaric in 410.

Rome was sacked again by the Vandals under Gaiseric in 455. This has traditionally been seen as a more thorough sack of the city than the one under Alaric (hence the word Vandalism for malicious property damage), though this has been contested.

The traditional date for the end of the western Roman empire (the one that contained the city of Rome, rather than the one based in Constantinople) is 476 CE, when the barbarian general Odovacar the Scyrrian deposed the emperor Romulus Augustulus. There was probably little actual change, as barbarian generals had effectively rule the western Roman empire for some time, and Odovacar claimed to be ruling in the name of the previous emperor Julius Nepos who was living in exile in Dalmatia at the time. When Nepos died, the Ostrogoths invaded and conquered Italy, maintaining the fiction that they were doing this on behalf of the eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople.

The city of Rome, and most of Italy, was reconquered during the reign of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian (ie., the Roman Empire which had its capital at Constantinople and is called by modern historians the Byzantine Empire). Rome was besieged a few times during the Gothic War (535-555), but I don't know whether there was a great deal of damage within the city.

The Lombards took Rome and the most of Italy from the Byzantines in 568-572, which removed the city from Byzantine control, but they did not actually sack the city.

Returning to the question of manuscripts of the Antiquities: Josephus wrote the Antiquities while he was a prisoner in Rome, so there would have been manuscripts of it there at the end of the first century. Whether there was still one or more manuscripts of the Antiquities at the beginning of the fourth century is unknown, but there may have been. Porphyry is the only pagan author to show knowledge of Josephus Antiquities (probably writing between 270 and the first few years of the fourth century) though he may have known it from Alexandria or elsewhere.

It does not take a sack of the city or destruction of a library to lose manuscripts. Ancient cataloguing and data retrieval systems were not very good, and manuscripts wear out and naturally deteriorate in moist climates, so they tend to disappear if not recopied. Most discoveries of manuscripts more than a few centuries old are made in desert climates.

John Curran, 'To Be Or Thought To Be, the Testimonium Flavianum (Again)' Novum Testamentum 59.1 (2017) 71-94 has argued relatively recently that some variants in the Latin versions of the Testimonium may be accounted for as due their dependence on Roman/Italian manuscripts of the (Greek) Antiquities:

ABSTRACT: Recent research on the textual tradition of Latin versions of the Testimonium Flavianum
prompts another enquiry into the original text and the transmission of the famous
passage. It is suggested here that the Greek/Latin versions highlight a western/eastern
early history of the Testimonium and that in turn directs our attention back to the original
circumstances of its composition and publication in the city of Rome in the later
years of the first century. Restored to its original historical context, the Testimonium
emerges as a carefully crafted attack upon the post-Pauline community of Christ followers
in the city

.

https://www.academia.edu/100206995/_To_ ... ght_to_Be_

Best,

Ken

[MrMacSon]

• What, if anything, has been documented of this —

  Rome was also burned and ransacked multiple times

  — after, say, 250 CE ?? (to, say, 600 CE ?)

I'll try to answer this, though I'm not sure how relevant it is.

Rome was sacked by the Visigoths under Alaric in 410.

Rome was sacked again by the Vandals under Gaiseric in 455 ... seen as a more thorough sack of the city than the one under Alaric (hence the word Vandalism for malicious property damage), though this has been contested.

The traditional date for the end of the western Roman empire (the one that contained the city of Rome, rather than the one based in Constantinople) is 476 CE, when the barbarian general Odovacar the Scyrrian deposed the emperor Romulus Augustulus ...

The city of Rome, and most of Italy, was reconquered during the reign of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian (ie., the Roman Empire which had its capital at Constantinople and is called by modern historians the Byzantine Empire). Rome was besieged a few times during the Gothic War (535-555), but I don't know whether there was a great deal of damage within the city.

The Lombards took Rome and the most of Italy from the Byzantines in 568-572, which removed the city from Byzantine control, but they did not actually sack the city.

Cheers, Ken.
Yeah, info about events in the 4th and 5th centuries or even later don't seem to be that relevant. It seems we have no evidence of Roman or even Ephesus library events as we do for the Great Library of Alexandria (which are often misrepresented, anyway)

Returning to the question of manuscripts of the Antiquities: Josephus wrote the Antiquities while he was a prisoner in Rome, so there would have been manuscripts of it there at the end of the first century.

The prisoner-writing-significant-things always intrigues me ...

For posterity:

Whether there was still one or more manuscripts of the Antiquities at the beginning of the fourth century is unknown, but there may have been. Porphyry is the only pagan author to show knowledge of Josephus' Antiquities (probably writing between 270 and the first few years of the fourth century) though he may have known it from Alexandria or elsewhere.

It does not take a sack of the city or destruction of a library to lose manuscripts. Ancient cataloguing and data retrieval systems were not very good, and manuscripts wear out and naturally deteriorate in moist climates, so they tend to disappear if not recopied. Most discoveries of manuscripts more than a few centuries old are made in desert climates.

John Curran, 'To Be Or Thought To Be, the Testimonium Flavianum (Again)' Novum Testamentum 59.1 (2017): 71-94, has argued relatively recently that some variants in the Latin versions of the Testimonium may be accounted for as due their dependence on Roman/Italian manuscripts of the (Greek) Antiquities:

ABSTRACT: Recent research on the textual tradition of Latin versions of the Testimonium Flavianum prompts another enquiry into the original text and the transmission of the famous passage. It is suggested here that the Greek/Latin versions highlight a western/eastern early history of the Testimonium and that in turn directs our attention back to the original circumstances of its composition and publication in the city of Rome in the later years of the first century. Restored to its original historical context, the Testimonium emerges as a carefully crafted attack upon the post-Pauline community of Christ followers in the city.

https://www.academia.edu/100206995/_To_ ... ght_to_Be_

Best,
Ken

I like the idea of parts of manuscripts or texts circulating in briefer or even note form, as Matthew Larsen proposed in his 2018 book, Gospels Before the Book (even in then older technology of wax tablets)