Antiquities 18.63-64
Josephus as it stands. I have included the three disputed portions in italics so they can be easily seen. It is clear why these portions are challenged as they are not likely to be things a Jew who was not a Christian would be likely to say. So here is the text:
Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again on the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct to this day.
Josephus text as proposed:
Now, there was about this time (a source of further trouble) Jesus, for he was a doer of surprising works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure (men who welcome strange things). He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him (cease to cause trouble). And the tribe of Christians, so named for him are not extinct to this day.
This proposal is likely to have been close to what Josephus originally wrote. A text like this is what many scholars suggest Josephus wrote.
Dr Bock,
A guy named Hector Avalos just wrote a book in which he argues that even if we have no doubts about the text as it was in the middle-ages (where the closest chronological copies date to), we can have no idea about what they said before then. According to him too much time passed between the writing and the earliest extant copies. The normal response is, "we'd have to question a lot of history if this standard is used." But that doesn't seem to settle the issue in my mind. What if it does mean we can't know as much as we'd really like to.? What do you think?
In Christ
Derek
Avalos is wrong. We have manuscripts dating back to the second century and full texts from the 4th. We also have citations from the Fathers from the second century on. This means that the extant manuscript pool is a good indication of where things were earlier. The stability of that copy record also shows how stable the copying process was. These records stretch across time and geographic regions also pointing to the age of these texts and their consistency.
Hope that this helps.
dlb
That does help, but what abot the Testimonium itself? Does it alos appear in those early copies One comman objections I hear is the fact it wasn't used in qoutes by Christian writers until the time of Eusebius (quoted by Jerome).
Derek
Derek:
Most scholars see much of the Testimonium as going back to Josephus. This is because Josephus later alludes to James as the brother of the Christ ("the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James;" Antiquities 20.200). This seems to assume a previous reference in 18.61-64. (For details, see my Studying the Historical Jesus, pp. 53-58)
dlb
Dr. Bock has not properly understood my position as outlined in
The End of Biblical Studies (2007). My position is that the manuscripts
of Josephus are from the Middle Ages. I was not referring to the NT
manuscripts.
This is not news, but it is not emphasized sufficiently when
arguing about the utility of Josephus in reconstructing the life of Jesus.
The Catholic scholar, John P. Meier (A Marginal Jew: Rethinking
the Historical Jesus, Volume 1, The Roots of the Problem and the Person
[New York: Doubleday, 1991] p. 100, n. 6 ) admits: “As with Josephus,
so with Tacitus our observations must be tempered by the fact that
the earliest manuscript of the Annals comes from the 11th century.”
However, I indeed have argued in great detail that trying to reconstruct the "original" of any NT text is futile from any of our extant manuscripts, which date from the second century and forward. I also have an entire chapter in The End of Biblical Studies explaining why any reconstruction of the life of Jesus is futile and laden wit theology rather than being the fruit of pure historical inquiry.
Prof Avalos:
Thank you for taking the time to clarify this discussion. Sorry for the misunderstanding although I do not think it alters the key point of the value of Josephus as much as your response suggests.
Working with manuscripts of this kind of date like those for Josephus is not unusual in ancient materials (especially when the testimony they contain receives earlier attestation in the testimony from other writers pointing to their existence earlier). This kind of cross attestation works as a check for our understanding of these texts and their age. I dare say that if we handled a great deal of classical materials on analogy with this level of hesitiation there would be swaths of classicial history and testimony about the period we'd have to set aside or at least asterisk.
The importance of the Antiquities 20.200 reference for the Testimonium is that this is the kind of incidental detail that is unlikely to be a later addition to make Josephus look more "Christian". As such it shows the likelihood that the topic was raised earlier in his work, as it seems to assume such a reference.
As we both know, work in Textual Criticism with NT manuscripts [and we do have a ton of them, many of them quite early] and with the historical Jesus are both areas of intense discussion in NT studies. Your last sentence says a great deal. I suspect what we would regard as "pure historical inquiry" would differ when it comes to texts laden with claims of divine activity such as those from Judaism, the Second Temple period and from what became the New Testament.
dlb
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