17th February 2008, 02:58 PM
|
|
Senior Member
|
|
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 388
Coins: 17,341.90
Bank: 0.00
Total Coins: 17,341.90
Donate
|
|
|
Meier's C3 reasons
With regard to (C3), Meier states the following:
Quote:
The implied "christology" aside, the author of the core of the Testimonium seems ignorant of certain basic material and key statements in the four canonical Gospels.
The statement that Jesus "won over" or "gained a following among" both (men) many Jews and (de kai) many of those of Gentile origin flies in the face of the overall description of Jesus' ministry in the four Gospels and of some individual affirmations that say just the opposite.
In the whole of John's Gospel, no one clearly designated a Gentile ever interacts directly with Jesus; the very fact that Gentiles seek to speak to Jesus is a sign to him that the hour of his passion, which alone makes a universal mission possible, is at hand (John 12:20-26). In Matthew's Gospel, where a few exceptions to the rule are allowed (the centurion [Matt 8:5-13]; the Canaanite woman [15:21-28]), we find a pointedly programmatic saying in Jesus' mission charge to the Twelve: "Go not to the Gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan city; rather, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt 10:5-6). The few Gentiles who do come into contact with Jesus are not objects of Jesus' missionary outreach; they rather come to him unbidden and humble, realizing they are out of place. For Matthew, they point forward to the universal mission, which begins only after Jesus' death and resurrection (28:16-20). While Mark and Luke are not as explicit as Matthew on this point, they basically follow the same pattern: during his public ministry, Jesus does not undertake any formal mission to the Gentiles; the few who come to him do so by way of exception.
Hence the implication of the Testimonium that Jesus equally (pollous men...pollous de kai) won a large following among both Jews and Gentiles simply contradicts the clear statements of the Gospels. Unless we want to fantasize about a Christian interpolator who is intent oh inserting a summary of Jesus' ministry into Josephus and who nevertheless wishes to contradict what the Gospels say about Jesus' ministry, the obvious conclusion to draw is that the core of the Testimonium comes from a non-Christian hand, namely, Josephus'. Understandably, Josephus simply retrojected the situation of his own day, when the original "Jews for Jesus" had gained many Gentile converts, into the time of Jesus. Naive retrojection is a common trait of Greco-Roman historians.
The description of the trial and condemnation of Jesus is also curious when compared to the four Gospels. All four Gospels state explicit reasons why first the Jewish authorities and then Pilate (under pressure) decide that Jesus should be put to death. For the Jewish rulers, the grounds are theological: Jesus claims to be the Messiah and Son of God. For Pilate, the question is basically political: does Jesus claim to be the king of the Jews? The grounds are explicated differently in different Gospel texts, but grounds there are. the Testimonium is strangely silent on why Jesus is put to death. It could be that Josephus simply did not know. It could be that, in keeping with his general tendency, he suppressed references to a or the Jewish Messiah. It could be that Josephus understood Jesus' huge success to be sufficient grounds. Whatever the reason, the Testimonium does not reflect a Christian way of treating the question why Jesus was condemned to death; indeed, the question simply is not raised.
Moreover, the treatment of the part played by the Jewish authorities does not jibe with the picture in the Gospels. Whether or not it be true that the Gospels show an increasing tendency to blame the Jews and exonerate the Romans, the Jewish authorities in the four Gospels carry a great deal of responsibility - either by way of the formal trial(s) by the Sanhedrin in the Synoptics or by way of the Realpolitik plotting of Caiaphas and the Jerusalem authorities in John's Gospel even before the hearings before Annas and Caiaphas. Of course, a later Christian believer, reading the four Gospels, would tend to conflate all four accounts, which would only heighten Jewish participation - something the rabid anti-Jewish polemic of many patristic writers only too gladly indulged in. All the stranger, therefore, is the quick, laconic reference in the Testimonium to the "denunciation" or "accusation" that the Jewish leaders make before Pilate; Pilate alone, however, is said to condemn Jesus to the cross. Not a word is said about the Jewish authorities passing any sort of sentence. Unless we are to think that some patristic or medieval Christian undertook a historical-critical investigation of the Passion narratives of the four Gospels and decided a la Paul Winter that behind John's narrative lay the historical truth of a brief hearing by some Jewish official before Jesus was handed over to Pilate, this description of Jesus' condemnation cannot stem from the four Gospels - and certainly not from early Christian expansions on them, which were fiercely anti-Jewish.
Another curiosity in the core of the Testimonium is the concluding statement that "to this day the tribe of Christians...has not died out." The use of phylon (tribe, nation, people) for Christians is not necessarily demeaning or pejorative. On the one hand, Josephus uses phylon elsewhere of the Jews (J.W. 7.8.6 [Section 327]); on the other hand, Eusebius also uses phylon of Christians. But the phrase does not stand in isolation; it is the subject of the statement that this tribe has not died out or disappeared down to Josephus' day. The implication seems to be one of surprise: granted Jesus' shameful end (with no new life mentioned in the core text), one is amazed to note, says Josephus, that this group of post-mortem lovers is still at it and has not disappeared even in our own day (does Josephus have in the back of his mind Nero's attempt to get it to disappear?). I detect in the sentence as a whole something dismissive if not hostile (though any hostility here is aimed at the Christians, not Jesus): One would have thought that by now this "tribe" of lovers of a crucified man might have disappeared. This does not sound like an interpolation by a Christian of any stripe. (Meier, 1990)
|
|