Continuing …… Peter Kirby focussed on the following point in his article arguing for the authenticity of the John the Baptist passage in Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus: (14) The Word for “Baptism” in the Passage Uncharacteristic of Christian Usage Kirby cited the scholar Robert Webb who pointed out that the words for “baptism” … Continue reading “Where does John the Baptist fit in History? — The Evidence of Josephus, Pt 5”
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Continuing…. (3) The Passage’s Reference to God’s Punishment of Herod Peter Kirby asserts that contradictory viewpoints in Josephus are no reason to suspect the involvement of an alien hand somewhere in the transmission of our manuscripts. He quotes my (somewhat facile) paraphrase of Zindler’s point: Neil Godfrey notes another one of the reasons that Zindler … Continue reading “Where does John the Baptist fit in History? — The Evidence of Josephus, Pt 4”
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Continuing from Where does John the Baptist fit in History? . . . . Peter Kirby’s first argument for the authenticity of the John the Baptist passage in Antiquities of Josephus is (1) The Textual Witness Itself All manuscripts contain the passage and Kirby goes one step further and states as a fact: It is … Continue reading “Where does John the Baptist fit in History? — The Evidence of Josephus, Pt 1”
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A Jewish scholar, Joshua Efron, believes that the entire “stoning of James” passage — yes, that James who is said to be “the brother of Jesus who was called Christ” — in Josephus is a Christian forgery. Now Efron does get under the skin of a few scholars when he argues with a sometimes abrasive … Continue reading “Is the Entire James Passage in Josephus an Interpolation?”
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Of making many posts about John the Baptist there is no end, and much discussion may weary, or stimulate, the flesh. Here’s another one. This post is the first in a series of perhaps three that intends to raise awareness of Rivka Nir‘s case for the passage about John the Baptist in Josephus being a … Continue reading “John the Baptist: Another Case for Forgery in Josephus”
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Continuing from Part 1 and Part 2 . . . All the same notes apply re my modifications of some sections of the translation, additional notes and hyperlinks. 3. Tacitus and Josephus The information we get from Ehrman about Tacitus and the Testimonium Taciteum, which he highly values, on 2 (two!) pages of the book is … Continue reading “Prof. “Errorman” and the non-Christian sources — Part 3: Tacitus and Josephus”
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What we have is a tradition that fairly consistently understood James to be the biological relative of Jesus, even when it eventually found it awkward to view him as Jesus’ biological brother because of other doctrines that had been developing surrounding Jesus and Mary. — Religion Prof Yes, and the earliest evidence we have of … Continue reading “When Did James Become the Brother of the Lord?”
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Here is an annotated list of Vridar posts addressing the famous passage in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, commonly known as the Testimonium Flavianum (TF). –o0o– The Jesus reference in Josephus: its ad hoc doctoring and various manuscript lines (2009-03-06) From various sources I have set out chronologically the earliest evidence we have for knowledge of the … Continue reading “Jesus in Josephus: Testimonium Flavianum“
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On another forum I recently posted a discussion of the passage in Galatians where Paul says he met James, “the brother of the Lord”, setting out why I believe the passage is not necessarily the “slam dunk” that many say it is to prove Jesus was a historical figure. I have other posts on other topics … Continue reading “Does “Brother of the Lord” settle the Jesus myth question?”
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Josephus does, in Jewish Antiquities, have two passages on the emergence of Christianity and the persecution of its followers, involving Jewish jurisdiction, but both are suspected of being interpolations. (Efron 1987, p. 333) Warning: this post addresses a small section of a work by Jewish scholar, Joshua Efron, Studies on the Hasmonean Period, that was … Continue reading “6 More Reasons to Question Josephus’ “James the brother of Jesus” passage”
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Josephus lays the blame for the Jewish rebel movement squarely on the shoulders of Judas the Galilean who led some sort of movement to oppose Roman taxes around the time of the infancy of Jesus — 6 CE. From this Judas arose what Josephus labels the “Fourth Philosophy”. The other three were the Pharisees, the Sadducees … Continue reading “Did Josephus Fabricate the Origins of the Jewish Rebellion Against Rome?”
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Continuing the series on Thomas Brodie’s Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, archived here. In chapter 17 Brodie is analysing John Meier’s work, A Marginal Jew, as representative of the best that has been produced by notable scholars on the historical Jesus. We saw from the opening post on Brodie’s … Continue reading “Making of a Mythicist — ch 17 . . . The Evidence of Josephus”
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Many of us are aware of the arguments of Frank Zindler that the John the Baptist passage in Josephus is an interpolation, but we leave those aside here and look at what Rivka Nir of the Open University of Israel offers as reasons for doubting the genuineness of the John the Baptist passage in Antiquities. … Continue reading “So John the Baptist was interpolated into Josephus? One more argument for the forgery case”
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Steven Carr has drawn our attention to Dr R. Joseph Hoffmann’s argument that Paul’s reference in Galatians 1:19 to “James, the brother of the Lord”, was clearly not meant to be understood by Paul as an indicator that James was the biological brother of Jesus. He wrote in The Jesus Tomb Debacle: RIP: The James … Continue reading “Hoffmann: James was NOT the biological brother of Jesus”
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