Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

[Ulan]

The historian Josephus who witnessed first hand the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation wrote that one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 20, chapter 9, 1.

What? I think you mix up your authors. This connection is made by Hegesippus in his Christian apologetics.

[MrMacSon]

The historian Josephus who witnessed first hand the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation wrote that one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 20, chapter 9, 1.

Therefore, a historical Jesus existed.

That's quite a huge leap to a small hook to hang the existence of a 'historical NT Jesus' on.

There have been a few publications arguing against it's autheticity -eg. --

1. Tessa Rajak made a brief argument against its authenticity in a footnote in her 1983 Josephus: The Historian and his Society.

2. Carrier (2012) “Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200.”

• Journal of Early Christian Studies 20.4: 489–514

3. Allen, NPL (2017) 'Josephus on James the Just? A re-evaluation of Antiquitates Judaicae 20.9.1' Journal of Early Christian History, 7; 1-27.

• Abstract
  This article reviews the well-known (supposedly Josephan) mention of James as “the Brother of Jesus” (i.e. Antiquitates Judaicae 20.9.1.200). Here, with reference to, inter alia, the insights of Earl Doherty, Steve Mason, Peter Kirby, John Paul Meier, Nikos Kokkinos, as well as to certain key findings gleaned from critical readings of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew and Contra Celsum, I attempt to demonstrate Origen’s possible role in the creation of this long-suspected fraudulent text. In this regard, by highlighting a number of Origen’s key philosophical and theological refutations it becomes evident that, apart from the unlikelihood of Josephus ever writing about James, Origen must now be considered the primary suspect for what is possibly a third century CE Christian forgery.

Of course the mythicists will claim the references to Jesus by Josephus are all interpolations yet, they have no proof, only wishful thinking.

As far as The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 18, chapter 3, 3 -


G.J. Goldberg. 1995. “The Coincidences of the Testimonium of Josephus and the Emmaus Narrative of Luke.”

• Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 13: 59–77.

Ken Olson. 1999. “Eusebius and the Testimonium Flavianum.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61:305–22.


Louis Feldman. 2012. “On the Authenticity of the ‘Testimonium Flavianum’ Attributed toJosephus.”

• in New Perspectives on Jewish Christian Relations, eds. E Carlebach & J Schacter (Brill), pp. 13–30.

• “In conclusion, there is reason to think that a Christian such as Eusebius would have sought to portray Josephus as more favorably disposed toward Jesus and may well have interpolated such a statement as that which is found in the Testimonium Flavianum.” (p. 28)

Ken Olson. 2013. “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum”,

• in Eusebius of Caesarea:Tradition and Innovations, eds. A Johnson & J Schott (Harvard University Press), pp. 97–114.

Ken Olson. 2013. “The Testimonium Flavianum, Eusebius, and Consensus.” The Jesus Blog (August 13):

• http://historicaljesusresearch.blogspot ... s-and.html

Paul Hopper. 2014. “A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii:63.”

• in Linguistics and Literary Studies: Interfaces, Encounters, Transfers, eds. M Fludernik & D Jacob (de Gruyter), pp. 147–169.

• Hopper notes that
  • " ..the uses of the Greek verb forms such as aorists and participles are distinct in the Jesus passage from those in the other Pilate episodes, and that these differences amount to a difference in genre."
  so
  • "It is suggested that the Jesus passage is close in style and content to the creeds that were composed two to three centuries after Josephus."

[Secret Alias]

If I could take over my thread again for a moment. It is interesting that if you admit the gospels came down to us in an unstable form and can't be used to prove certainly that Jesus was a man and that he existed the testimony of Papias comes out of the blue as a surprising shot in the arm. Papias of course makes mention of many witnesses to the historical Jesus. But it is worth noting that we don't have Papias's book any longer. I don't doubt the book existed as Eusebius had access to it. But we have to remember that that's all it was - a book. Again a book which was cited by Irenaeus and known to Papias makes mention of countless 'witnesses' to Jesus. But how did that co-exist with a heretical doctrine prevalent among the Marcionites and others who simply understood the gospel narrative to have been product of a vision of Paul? The whole story of Papais is suspicious. Of course Philip has daughters and his daughters are known. Of course. But suspicious.

[Charles Wilson]

...a book which was cited by Irenaeus..."

SA, would you please start a Thread telling what you know and believe about Irenaeus? You keep (for years now...) coming back to Irenaeus and if it all/mostly goes back to this author, give us a few lines about what you believe here.

Thnx,

CW

[John T]

The historian Josephus who witnessed first hand the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation wrote that one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 20, chapter 9, 1.

What? I think you mix up your authors. This connection is made by Hegesippus in his Christian apologetics.

Sorry, but I think you missed my point regarding the double standard used by mythicists when it comes to the historicity of Jesus.

"Josephus also has not hesitated to add this testimony in his works: "These things," said he, "happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of him that is called Christ, and whom the Jews had slain, notwithstanding his pre-eminent justice."...Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book2, chapter 23, (20).

John T

[MrMacSon]

Sorry, but I think you missed my point regarding the double standard¹ used by mythicists when it comes to the historicity of Jesus.

"Josephus also has not hesitated to add this testimony in his works: "These things," said he, "happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of him that is called Christ, and whom the Jews had slain, notwithstanding his pre-eminent justice."...Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book2, chapter 23, (20).

1. It's not clear to what 'double standard' you are referring to.


Your previous post said

The historian Josephus who witnessed first hand the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation wrote that one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 20, chapter 9, 1.

Yet it wasn't Antiquities 20,9,1 / 20.200 that said " one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James 'the Just', the brother of Jesus."


It was Origen, and he did it twice.


Moreover, Josephus does not refer to James as "whom the Jews had slewn". It was John [the Baptist] who Josephus used the word slew for -

• " .. for Herod slew him [John], who was a good man ..." Antiquities 18,5,2
  
  The context of this reference is the 36 AD defeat of Herod Antipas by Aretas IV of Nabatea, which the Jews of the time are said to have attributed to misfortune brought about by Herod's unjust execution of John.

eta: John was slain/slewn by a Jew: Herod was a Jew.


Furthermore, the moniker 'the Just' appears nowhere in the previous literature.


And, all three Antiquities passages are under a cloud of suspicion of being doctored or inserted by Origen, Pamphilus, or Eusebius (or a combination).


.

[Ulan]

The historian Josephus who witnessed first hand the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation wrote that one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 20, chapter 9, 1.

What? I think you mix up your authors. This connection is made by Hegesippus in his Christian apologetics.

Sorry, but I think you missed my point regarding the double standard used by mythicists when it comes to the historicity of Jesus.

"Josephus also has not hesitated to add this testimony in his works: "These things," said he, "happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of him that is called Christ, and whom the Jews had slain, notwithstanding his pre-eminent justice."...Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book2, chapter 23, (20).

John T

That's an Eusebius quote, not from Josephus. Josephus never said anything like that as far as I am aware. He definitely didn't say this in the "Antiquities" quote that you used.

You cannot point out double standards of mythicists by giving an example of how a myth was produced by Christian apologists.

You, like the Christian apologists of old, invoke the name of the historian "Josephus" to attribute something to him what he, as we can see from the texts we have of him, never said, namely that the calamities that befell the Jews avenged the death of James the Just. Connecting this thought to the figure of Josephus is done to give this idea some weight that it doesn't have.

This whole complex illustrates the difficulties we face in reconstructions of history from these texts. Imagine we would not have the text of Josephus and all we had were the writings of the church fathers. We would naturally assume that what several of them said would be correct, here the role of "James the Just" in the outbreak of the Jewish War as portrayed by the historian Josephus. However, as we have the text, we know that they are wrong. This leads to follow-up questions: Why are they wrong? Did they mix authors up (like Origen here maybe did with Josephus/Hegesippus)? Did they have a different version of the text of Josephus? Did they just tell pious lies? Take your pick.

Some of these possibilities lead us to questioning our textual record. If the church fathers already seemed to have different texts from how we know them to be today, how can we tell which text is "right"? If their textual baseline differs from our textual baseline, we cannot use their claims to bolster our claims, at least not in the way they intended.

Lastly, this leads us to the problem of the actual quotes from Josephus' works. If the works of the church fathers show us that the texts of Josephus saw already distortions in their times, what makes us so sure that anything in "his" texts is really written by him? This question is a rather natural outcome of what we observe here.

But thank you very much for demonstrating why we should not simply trust the testimony of ancient writers. This is an excellent example you made for this point.

[Paul the Uncertain]

Ulan

Imagine we would not have the text of Josephus and all we had were the writings of the church fathers. We would naturally assume that what several of them said would be correct, here the role of "James the Just" in the outbreak of the Jewish War as portrayed by the historian Josephus.

It's fun to imagine what we'd think if we didn't have the text, especially since we actually don't have the text independent of Christian scribes.

Following the hypothetical, though, I think we would still notice that Eusebius quotes Josephus verbatim at length, and notice that what he quotes doesn't support Origen's recollection except (supposedly) for the few words "called Christ" in connection with some hapless James. Josephus, in Eusebius' testimony, tells us nothing about whether James deserved his fate, just that his judge was a hot-head hard-liner and his trial was procedurally irregular. The conclusion that Eusebius simply can't find what Origen is talking about beyond that would be irresistable.

Further, Origen neither claims nor writes as if he has the text open before him. Given the known infirmities of human memory, the curiosity that a Jewish historian would attribute a religious and political cataclysm to a routine injustice against a secondary NT character, and that this historian would use a catchphrase from the Gospel of Matthew to describe the principal NT character, the very Gospel Origen happens to be working on at about that time, ...

Nobody has ever gone broke betting that the Guild would buy into some flimsy argument. Still, I think the battle lines would be just about where they actually are today in real life.

[neilgodfrey]

The historian Josephus who witnessed first hand the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation wrote that one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 20, chapter 9, 1.

What? I think you mix up your authors. This connection is made by Hegesippus in his Christian apologetics.

Sorry, but I think you missed my point regarding the double standard used by mythicists when it comes to the historicity of Jesus.

"Josephus also has not hesitated to add this testimony in his works: "These things," said he, "happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of him that is called Christ, and whom the Jews had slain, notwithstanding his pre-eminent justice."...Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book2, chapter 23, (20).

John T

John T has demonstrated once again his double standards. One rule for him and quite another for those he opposes.

[John T]

The historian Josephus who witnessed first hand the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation wrote that one of the main causes of the war was due to the execution of James the Just, the brother of Jesus.

The Antiquities of the Jews. Book 20, chapter 9, 1.

What? I think you mix up your authors. This connection is made by Hegesippus in his Christian apologetics.

Sorry, but I think you missed my point regarding the double standard used by mythicists when it comes to the historicity of Jesus.

"Josephus also has not hesitated to add this testimony in his works: "These things," said he, "happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was the brother of him that is called Christ, and whom the Jews had slain, notwithstanding his pre-eminent justice."...Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History Book2, chapter 23, (20).

John T

John T has demonstrated once again his double standards. One rule for him and quite another for those he opposes.

Shoe is now on the other food and it is uncomfortable for the mythicists to admit to their double standard. Be as that may, let's see if I can give them a blister on their big toe of hypocrisy.

So, tell us if the Jewish revolt was real and the real causes behind it. Keep in mind the roles are now reversed and I get to use your double standard against you.

John T