Josephus and Jesus

by jhine 52 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  mP

  Phizzy:

  Firstly lets recall that Christ like Messiah means chosen one. All kings & priests were Messiahs, in that the jews like many ancient peoples believed their leaders were appointed or selected by God. Its erroneous to believe that jesus of the Bible was the first and last christ. He wasnt. You can find many christs and Messiahs if you just look.

  Given the text is talking about a high priest Jesus of Damneus, its logical that he would be considered a selected one which he was. Lets not forget in the gospels when Mary spends lots of money and annoints Jsus with oil, she is not inventing a new procedure she is merely repeating an established custom. TO repeat a custom it must mean it was used before many times etc. Everyone knows the story of the annoiting of Saul by Samuel etc.
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  Phizzy

  Thanks mP, it just goes to show how armchair scholars like me need to do a lot more work before giving our opinion.

  I have just looked further and found that the particular phrase we have been looking at is not considered by most modern scholars to be an interpolation, but as you say,we still have to read it correctly !

  What I find fascinanting is that Christians from early times have found it necessary to tamper with the text of Josephus to try to give the Jesus story some kind of seeming independent confirmation.

  It just highlights the fact that the whole story that we have cannot be rated higher than myth, or they would not be so desperate as to produce "evidence" by forgery.
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  PSacramento

  Even Bart Ehrman sates that the hsitorical Jesus is not really to be debated as such.

  http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0703/Biblical-scholar-Bart-Ehrman-supports-the-historic-existence-of-Jesus

  As for Jesus outside the NT, may I suggest:

  Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Studying the Historical Jesus) by Robert E. Van Voorst (Mar 1, 2000)

  A good place to start.
• 

  mP

  Phizzy:

  What I find fascinanting is that Christians from early times have found it necessary to tamper with the text of Josephus to try to give the Jesus story some kind of seeming independent confirmation.

  mP:
  For sure, xians have been changing the Bible since the very beginning. Its good to see this tradition continues today with all xian churches, JWs included. SUpposedly they (the church) also destroyed the texts of many other competitor religions. We can read the history of the great lib in Alexandria which got burnt down in the mid 400 and one culprit includes the church becase they wished to destroy evidence they were the same as the pagans in beliefs. Most xians dont realise that the catholics selected the 4 gospels in our bible from dozens even hundreds of other gospels. We have a very sanitized or edited text.

  Given everybody knows the story of Jesus, its important to read the text without introducing our own biases. Everybody assumes Jesus was the only Christ or Messiah ever and so on. They also assume that any text with the name Jesus must be our Jesus even if the character has a different father etc.

  Whats perhaps interesting is they didnt try and insert more insertions. One or two in all of josephus works seems pretty pathetic. If i was them i would have done a lot more than one.
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  jhine

  thanks Psac for coming to my aid , is it only me (perhaps ) that sees the other two Jesus' named as two seperate from that Jesus connected to James and so their parentage is irrelevant . I have said that this does not prove that the first Jesus is the Jesus but ,to me at least , the fact of different dads named proves nothing one way or the other . Am I going mad ? mP and Phizzy do not answer this solely on the grounds that I am a Christian !
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  Phizzy

  Dear jhine, I said above that scholars mostly agree that the phrase "James, the brother of Jesus, who is called Christ,..." or however it goes is more than likely not an interpolation, and it may refer to Jesus of Nazareth.

  mP above has posited an alternative way of understanding the phrase as applying to Jesus son of Damneus, not to Jesus of Nazareth, you have not addressed his point.

  I still find it illuminating that christians have tampered with the text of Josephus elsewhere, why the need if the historicity of Jesus is so sure ?

  We are of course arguing at a disadadvantage, the oldest text we have of Josephus is tenth century, and we know redactions took place before then, so, as with the Gospels themselves, we cannot be sure what the writer originally penned.
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  bohm

  I havent read the entire thread, but I really find the discussion of josepheus confusing.

  Lets just say josepheus wrote everything attributed to him, and lets say josepheus refer to jesus christ when he talk about jesus. That would mean that around year 90 (when Antiquities was written) there were christians who believed:

  • Jesus had a brother called James
  • Jesus was called christ, was a noble man, was killed, there are still christians etc.
  • jesus performed miracles
  • he rose from the dead
  • + some other things.

  And these things was told to him in a manner so persuasive he reported them as facts (but did not convert).

  As far as i can tell, this is telling us christians at around year 90 believed what paulus believed (and convinced others about) some 40 years prior, and they were persuasive -- in other words, absolutely nothing new. If someone had send Josepheus some of pauls letters and those alone had convinced him, he would pretty much have written all of the above.

  I cant even tell why this provide evidence jesus existed (mind im not saying he didnt), because no matter if you are a mythesist or not, you believe that around year 90 the early christians largely believed jesus had in fact lived (because thats what they wrote in Mark) and thats about all josepheus is reporting.
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  jhine

  o.k. last word from me as this is going nowhere . LOts of scholars say that the James reference is authentic . I have just spent an hour looking this up . John Painter , theologian (look him up ) says that "who is called Christ " is used by Josephus to distinguish him from the other two whose parentage he gives . Seems to me that if the Jesus associated with James was the one made High Priest he would be refered to as "son of Damneus" all the way through to avoid any complication , by using the different descriptions Josephus is making it plain that the two men are different people .
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  PSacramento

  WHat is contested in regards to the two times Josephus mentions Jesus is what is viewed as added on by later scribes, the majority of h istoricans and scholars do NOT contest that Josepheus is of the opinion that Jesus existed.

  http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/josephus.html
• 

  mP

  jhine:

  .k. last word from me as this is going nowhere . LOts of scholars say that the James reference is authentic

  mP:

  Thats fine, but given we have the original source ourselves and the text is reasonably short we too can read it. There are 4 texts which have been noted above that xians and so minded scholars use as historical non biblical proofs.

  I have explained that Christ was a title, it was not unique to Jesus Chrsit son of God from the gospels. Every president of the United States is also selected for their position. This is the meaning of the word. From what i can tell you have aborted any attempt at showing what im aserting is incorrect. The "Jesus the Christ brother of James" is not the gospel jesus, its simply a way of saying "Jesus son of Damneus who was selected for highpriest has a brother called James". When you realise this, its obvious the text is not talking about Jesus.

  I am assuming from the fact yu fail to try and disprove what i am presenting, that at the very least you acknowledge theres a reasonable chance i could be right and you have selected to move on.

  JH:

  Seems to me that if the Jesus associated with James was the one made High Priest he would be refered to as "son of Damneus" all the way through to avoid any complication , by using the different descriptions Josephus is making it plain that the two men are different people .

  mP:

  I dont understand how you can say that line "Jesus the christ brother of James" (paraphrase) is about our jesus christ of the gospels but every other Jesus in the text before and after is about jesus son of Damneus. This is a messy text if that is so. Its fair easier to see that the author( doesnt matter who it was) tells a story about a Jesus and then tells us he was the son of Damneus. Notice no where does it say the other Jesus was the son of Joseph from Gallilee. Throughout the text the author tries to identify each of the main characters in some way and uses their only name( people didnt have surnames then) inthe main text and then somewhere says their father was this or some other unique way of identifying them.

  He does not repeat the formula for the "second Jesus" because there is no other Jesus son of Joseph etc. Did Jesus son of Damneus have a brother called James. He might have i dont know the defniitive answer to this, but given James aka Jacob was a popular name he very well could have. If he did the text still makes sense.

  If you wish to review the other 3 big texts with quotes lets do so.