Iosephiana

[Secret Alias]

For me at least the situation with Mason and Josephus (I knew and hung out with Mason at York University back in the day) is the same as German scholars and Marcion. We know there is a level of bullshit here. But how deep do you want to drill until the whole point of what you are studying is compromised? I have said the same thing about this in another way with atheist scholars like Cargill and Avalos. You can't complain that they are cutting jobs in your field of study as a result of you demonstrating that most of we've believed about this nonsense is fake. The one fact here is that if Josephus is a fake, if God doesn't exist, if Christianity is a lie - why are people paying you to study this nonsense?

[Secret Alias]

And I have friends entering various fields of study related to early Christianity or religion and they start out as skeptics like us ... but then a job is offered and well ... after looking at their student debt and a new wife wanting to be assured that she hadn't married a complete loser and sometimes a kid on the way let's just say they learn to become more deferential to authorities quite quickly.

[Secret Alias]

The only people who don't date Agrippa II to 95 CE are Josephus scholars and the only reason they 'stretch' Life's date of publication to 95 CE is that it is the latest possible date to make the text agree with Agrippa's coinage. The more natural reading of Antiquities would suggest that Life was composed in the same year i.e. 93 CE. But then again there is the 'problem' of coinage of Agrippa dated to 95 CE. I bet you if we look to scholarship before the discovery of numismatic evidence to 95 CE the dating of Life was all lined up to 93 CE:

https://books.google.com/books?id=YTGRc ... pa&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=KKznC ... pa&f=false

'the last dated coins are of the year 35 = 95 CE"

https://books.google.com/books?id=yDsaA ... pa&f=false

" Coins of his reign are found dating as far as 95 a.d., but his death took place in the year 100 a.d."

https://books.google.com/books?id=jHwUA ... pa&f=false

"The coins of Agrippa II (50 — 100 A. D.) are also dated by the regnal years 5 — 35, i.e. 60 — 95 A. D. "

https://books.google.com/books?id=yYsaA ... YQ6AEITDAJ

[Peter Kirby]

And I have friends entering various fields of study related to early Christianity or religion and they start out as skeptics like us ... but then a job is offered and well ... after looking at their student debt and a new wife wanting to be assured that she hadn't married a complete loser and sometimes a kid on the way let's just say they learn to become more deferential to authorities quite quickly.

All very true, as it goes, but none of that gives you infallibility either, obviously.

Agrippa II to 95 CE

Doesn't this already contradict Photius? Also, what gives this date its precision? Why not December 94 or January 96, etc.? Knowing that scholars make mistakes, why are you simply quoting conclusions and not evidence?

And what are the stakes? If the Life were completed in 95/96, what follows? Is that actually a problem?

[Secret Alias]

But that assumes or necessitates that the last coin = the date of death which is a mountainman argument.

[Peter Kirby]

But that assumes or necessitates that the last coin = the date of death which is a mountainman argument.

What is the date of the last coin? Can you go over the evidence instead of all this rhetoric?

Oh. Edits.

[Peter Kirby]

a mountainman argument

Buddhist Scholar Koan: When is a mountainman argument not a mountainman argument?

Answer: When it has the Buddha nature.

Interpretation: There are arguments, then there are mountainman arguments... and never the twain shall meet.

[Secret Alias]

Antiquities knows about Life.
Antiquities knows about Justus's Chronicle.
Life knows about Justus's Chronicle.
Life says that Justus only wrote his Chronicle once Agrippa was dead.
Agrippa died some time after 95 CE
Antiquities ends abruptly and says (a) a discussion of the uprising will follow and be brief presumably because presumably Jewish Wars already existed (b) it will continue to describe the situation with Jews until the date of composition and (c) that date of composition i.e. 'today' was 93 CE
Justus's Chronicle was written in 101 CE and contained information that went up to 101 CE presumably
Our surviving text of Josephus's Chronicle say it will go up to the present day but does not
Clement of Alexandria testifies that the chronology of Justus was published in 147/148 CE

Why does it make sense to deny everything and support a Josephan authorship in 93 CE when that's plainly impossible.

[Ben C. Smith]

But that assumes or necessitates that the last coin = the date of death which is a mountainman argument.

What is the date of the last coin? Can you go over the evidence instead of all this rhetoric?

Oh. Edits.

Joshua Yoder, Representatives of Roman Rule: Roman Provincial Governors in Luke-Acts, page 139:

Since the numismatic and epigraphic evidence for Agrippa's reign ends in 91 and 93 respectively, we are not obliged to accept Photius' statement about the time of his death.*

* .... The latest inscriptional evidence for Agrippa II is OGIS 426 = IGR 3.1127, dated 92/3 C.E. Coins dated 34 and 35 are extant; these could be from 89/90 and 90/91 or from 94/95 and 95/96, depending on the era they are using (Agrippa II used both 56 and 61). ....

Ben.

[Secret Alias]

So the dating of Josephus should make us take the earliest possible date for the coins. But what about the evidence of Josephus responding to Justus's Chronicle written in 101 CE and Clement attesting to the Chronicle of Josephus being written in 147/48 CE. All errors too? So coins are moved up to the earliest possible date. Photius was drunk and Clement fooled by a forgery. Three strikes and I am out.