Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The reason the have a blind spot here is that necessarily pushes the canonical gospels back much later than 147/148 too. It's the domino effect.

Secret Alias wrote:So it makes sense that Antiquities responded to a Chronology of Justus of Tiberias ten years before the text it was responding to was actually written? Jilted boyfriend logic.

"Now of these several reasons for writing history, I must profess the two last were my own reasons also; for since I was myself interested in that war which we Jews had with the Romans, and knew myself its particular actions, and what conclusion it had, I was forced to give the history of it, because I saw that others (= Justus) perverted the truth of those actions in their writings."

Are you assuming that the text from Justus concerning the war (described by Josephus) and the text from Justus containing a chronicle (described by Photius) are the same text?

If so, that needs some justification, as most consider them two different works.

Antiquities is a response to Justus's Chronicle. It is plainly stated so in the introduction (unless you suppose that Josephus is responding to Justus's Chronicle in Life and another Jewish chronicle which deals with the War in Antiquities). The problem with positing the existence of another Jewish chronicle (aside from the obvious desperateness of this logic) is that there was no other Jewish account of the War.

as most consider them two different works

Yeah I wonder why.

How could they be two different works? What is the rational basis for that assumption? There is none.

Apologetics is not limited to the plausibility of the resurrection in the tomb.

Secret Alias wrote:

as most consider them two different works

Yeah I wonder why.

Secret Alias wrote:How could they be two different works? What is the rational basis for that assumption? There is none.

How? It's so simple, that you make it sound like you have nothing real to say.

95/96 AD -- Justus writes about the Jewish war.

103 AD -- Justus writes a chronicle.

Is there something to indicate that Photius and Josephus were referring to the same text, other than the common author?

It's pretty important to your argument, apparently.

Where is the evidence (not wishful thinking) that Justus wrote two texts? Show me a reference to a second text. End of story . So just to recap.

1. Clement clearly attests to a Chronicle of the Jews written by 'Flavius Josephus the Jew' which ended in 147/148 CE. This chronology was also known to Eusebius and Epiphanius.
2. Our existing chronicle of the Jews by Flavius Josephus the Jew (= Antiquities) ends at the beginning of the Jewish War with the excuse that he just wrote it at the insistence of a pagan who was interested in the history of the Jewish people.
3. All chronologies of this sort (i.e the history of a people) go from the beginning of the thing being studied until the date of composition. The Jewish people are clearly understood to be a living people. So one would expect the chronology to go down until the date of publication (like all others in this genre).
4. Josephus clearly states at the beginning of Antiquities that the text (like Life) is a response to the chronology of Justus which went down to the date of publication.

It is difficult if not impossible to believe that our chronicle of Josephus responding to Justus's chronology is the original text of that chronology.

No read the account of Photius. It is absolutely explicit that Josephus is responding to the Chronology of 103 CE. There is no wiggle room:

It is said that the history which he wrote is in great part fictitious, especially where he describes the Judaeo-Roman war and the capture of Jerusalem.

There is no 'second' account.

It is entirely plausible (but by no means a proven fact) that a twenty year old who survived the Jewish War could have written a response to the 'lies' of Justus (which had up to that point circulated in antiquity and were considered true) about the Jewish War (undoubtedly because Josephus was disparaged in Justus's narrative). That this response may have been pseudepigraphal would hardly surprise me. But that someone like Clement accepted the claims that it was 'Josephus' is in my mind unquestionable given the historical situation of Josephus writing a response to an original text which ended in 103 CE. 147 CE is possible. 93 CE is not.