Bleachers: Josephus and the Historicity of Jesus Christ

Lightkeeper · (#1 (**permalink**))

Please post your comments about the Josephus and the Historicity of Jesus Christ debate in this thread and not in the debate thread. Any outside comments in the debate thread will be moved here.

tricky · (#2 (**permalink**))

Before this debate started, I leaned towards there being no real Jesus in history. Although I am not a christian, I am a big fan of Jesus and the Jesus story whether it be true or not, much in the same way that I am a fan of Sherlock Holmes for his crime busting prowess and Jean Luc Picard for his leadership skills and wisdom.

I look forward to watching the debate unfold and whether it sways my pre-debate bias in favour of TC's position. Before the debate I was of the opinion tthat a real Jesus seemed unlikely mainly due to there being a distinct lack of evidence (IMO) for his existence with the exception of a few lines here and there - and even those being of dubious origin. It strikes me as odd that such a powerful man / story as portrayed in the New Testament should go largely unnoticed by history and it's most prominent writers of the times.

Good luck to both debaters and I look forward to seeing if Harvey can cast doubt upon my existing bias.

vivamis123 · (#3 (**permalink**))

I too am a big Fan of Jesus. I have always felt very close to him and his teachings. But where I stand today is that Jesus is a part of me. It does not matter anymore if he really existed as a person (even though I believe he did) or not.

T.C. has brought about a change in me and my relationship to Jesus that I had no idea could be possible: To find Jesus within me and no longer outside of me.

Harvey has very good arguments that go against those of T.C. Harvey is smart and with wit and is picking up on every single little detail.

Both T.C. and Harvey truly know their stuff and I feel honered to be a witness to this debate.

Good luck to both.

Eolas Pellor · (#4 (**permalink**))

Harvey has raised some very good points.

I tend to believe there must have been an historical Yeshua Bar Yosef, but doubt that the figure in the gospels bears any real resemblance to the rabbi of Nazareth.

evangelicalhumanist · (#5 (**permalink**))

So far, I'm quite impressed with the amount of research that both have done. I look forward to how the debate unfolds, but as moderator, should refrain from any opinions quite yet.

vivamis123 · (#6 (**permalink**))

Good point Eolas.

Just the other day I was thinking that 2000 years is not that long of a time. Can we have created something from non existent to existence in that short time fraim?

I mean I could start a rumour but how far would it travel in 2000 years?

E.H. I see nothing wrong with you as a moderator, having an opinon. You are a posters too : )

evangelicalhumanist · (#7 (**permalink**))

Quote:

Originally Posted by vivamis123

Just the other day I was thinking that 2000 years is not that long of a time. Can we have created something from non existent to existence in that short time fraim?

I mean I could start a rumour but how far would it travel in 2000 years?

Many rumours have started and become well-known "truths" in a much shorter time. For example, did you know that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon? Well, turns out that's not true.

Did you know that we only use 10% of our brains? Everybody knows that! But guess again, it's not true either.

There are many of these sorts of things, including the "fact" that if you go swimming less than an hour after eating, you'll get cramps and drown! And no, George Washington did not chop down a cherry tree. That's a story invented by Parson Mason Weems.

The story of King Arthur is much less than 2000 years old, but there was no such person. Lady Godiva actually existed (though she didn't ride naked through town), and Prester John didn't, although the search for him helped expand geographical knowledge of the world.

vivamis123 · (#8 (**permalink**))

E.H. Were any of these rumors created 2000 years ago?

Wrong knowledge does not always start out being a rumour. Sometimes it is what science found at one point, as years went by approaches have changed and technology has advanced leading to different results.

Besides,what we discover is only based on the questions we ask. The wiser we get in asking questions the closer we get in discovering the truth.

I ask myself what will people in the future say about us? Will we too disappear into a myth?

Is anyone aware that we are actually right now in this moment experiencing history in the future? LOL

Harvey1 · (#9 (**permalink**))

Stating the reasons for (C2), Meier offers this argument:

Quote:

a definite advantage of the position I propose is its relative simplicity. Too many of the other proposals we have reviewed indulge in rewriting the Greek text, sometimes on flimsy grounds. This holds all the more for those who would rewrite Josephus to turn his statement into a hostile attack on Jesus. In contrast, I have simply bracketed the clearly Christian statements. What is remarkable is that the text that remains- without the slightest alteration - flows smoothly, coheres with Josephus' vocabulary and style, and makes perfect sense in his mouth. A basic rule of method is that, all things being equal, the simplest explanation that also covers the largest amount of data is to be preferred. [53] Hence I submit that the most probable explanation of the Testimonium is that, shorn of the three obviously Christian affirmations, it is what Josephus wrote. (Meier, 1990)

Harvey1 · (#10 (**permalink**))

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)

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