Vridar

2025-07-08

Am I Posting or Not?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

A few months ago I posted Hard to post right now and explained that I was feeling overwhelmed by some fundamental changes underway in the world I thought I had always lived in. The old world order is gone, no more hope in western nations at least making a show of working within the UN and Human Rights Charter– it’s all dead — Europe is on the warpath, America has dropped all pretence over its motives … horrific. Now peace activists are being charged with terrorism offences and antisemitism. I’ve had time to adjust now and not be overwhelmed by the sense of powerlessness that is in various ways propagated by the media. And new media now have exposed a small light that a new generation is noticing.

But the semester holidays will be over near the end of July and I will return to full time study again then.

2025-07-07

“You may as well deny the existence of pretty much everyone in the ancient world”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

I will continue writing posts in response to Thomas Schmidt’s Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence so this post is a quick interjection before I have the time to write more fully about another Jesus hypothesis that appears to be being widely discussed at the moment — the hypothesis that Jesus was an anti-Roman rebel, a seditionist, in particular, the following book:

Bermejo-Rubio, Fernando. 2023. They Suffered under Pontius Pilate: Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha. Fortress Academic.

(We met Fernando Bermejo-Rubio as recently as my last post, by the way, where I examined his citational support for Josephus writing a negative passage about Jesus.)

The reason I am jumping in early at this time is to flesh out (just a little) some responses I have made in discussions relating to other posts. It’s been a long time since I posted about historical methods, especially as they relate to Jesus, so consider this a brief reminder or recap.

Bermejo-Rubio repeats a common assumption:

As Justin Meggitt has rightly observed, “to deny his existence based on the absence of such evidence, even if that were the case, has problematic implications; you may as well deny the existence of pretty much everyone in the ancient world.”

I responded to Justin Meggitt’s claim back in 2020. It is available here:

The Great Method Gap between “Biblical Historians” and Historians in History Departments

Evidence for Historical Persons vs Evidence for Jesus

A few of my other posts addressing the same question of how we know about ancient persons and whether the evidence for Jesus is comparable to anyone else:

HISTORICAL METHOD and the Question of Christian Origins (a summary of sound historical method)

And a lot more are listed here:

Ancient Historiography and Historians — Vridar Posts

When Historical Persons are Overlaid with Myth

Other statements by Bermejo-Rubio that struck me as misguided:

After all, although some biographies of ancient historical characters such as Alexander the Great and the emperor Augustus contain quite a few mythical elements in their framework, it does not justify our disputing in principle the historicity of the characters themselves . . .

That point is answered in the above posts. When historical figures are overlaid by others — and even by themselves — with mythical trappings (e.g. Alexander as Dionysus, Hadrian as Hercules), we can see clearly where the real human is distinct from the mythical propaganda image.

Inconsistencies and Incongruities are a Common Element among Mythical Figures

Another:

Had Jesus been a construct created out of whole cloth, the accounts about him would presumably have been far more homogeneous. The fact that our sources are systematically inconsistent and are riddled with incongruities is better explained if we assume that a real character on the stage of history was modified in the later tradition.

Sarah Iles Johnston explains why the inconsistencies in mythical gods and heroes have made them so appealing and believable.

Quite the contrary. It is real historical figures that emerge with fair measures of consistency; it is the mythical characters who are riddled with contradictions and incongruities. In fact it is the inconsistencies that are part of the enticing mystery and allure make such figures so attractive and believable! See

And one page that sums it all up in a simple table:

The Bible — History or Story? — where I sum up the error at the base of so much biblical studies by distilling the main points of Philip Davies pivotal publication.

But for now — back to work on some other aspects of Thomas Schmidt’s argument for Josephus making a valuable contribution to our knowledge of Christian origins. . . .

(By the way — questions of historicity and authenticity do arise in classical studies, too. I look forward to posting a few instances and comparing how they are approached by ancient historians and scholars with a primary focus on biblical studies.)

2025-07-06

“Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 4 – ‘he led astray many’?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Continued from Review 3 . . .

And when it is pointed out that, after all, we are talking about texts written in Koine Greek (and so the language ability is pretty important), and that . . . requires a lot of study, all this if one wishes to make some kind of soundly-based judgement . . . (Hurtado 2012)

Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin . . . not to mention the modern languages of scholarship (for example, German and French). And that is just for starters. Expertise requires years of patiently examining ancient texts . . . . (Ehrman 2013, 4f)

When a scholarly book is made open access in order to reach an audience as wide as possible one would expect many lay readers to feel out of their depth when reading claims about the meaning of the Greek words in Josepus’s passage about Jesus (the Testimonium Flavianum / TF).

As I mentioned earlier, I have since taken up formal studies in ancient Greek and have acquired enough awareness of the technicalities of ancient Greek and a knowledge of the reference tools used by scholars to see when baseless arguments are being fed to lay readers. In this post I take interested readers through a citation trail that Thomas Schmidt initiated in order to confirm his claim that Josephus was deliberately encouraging willing readers to interpret a passage about Jesus in a negative light. We will see by the end that the citation trail not only fails to support Schmidt’s case but even arguably points to its opposite – that the original Greek is meant to be understood in a positive sense. Most certainly we will see that there is no suggestion of the ambiguity for which Schmidt argues.

Schmidt’s argument re ἐπηγάγετο (epēgageto)

. . . and he [Jesus] brought over many of the Jews and many also of the Greeks . . . (TF)

Other translations for “brought over” (i.e. ἐπηγάγετο) read:

. . . “led astray / led away” (other possibilities listed by Schmidt)
. . . “won over” (Feldman)
. . . “drew over” (Whiston)
. . . “gained a following from” (Meier)
. . . “led astray” (Morton Smith)
. . . “attached to himself” (Zeitlin)
. . . “attracted” (Mason)
. . . “seduced” (Eisler)

In Schmidt’s view, Josephus wrote with careful ambiguity about Jesus attracting followers. Josephus, he explains, wrote the equivalent Greek words of Jesus “bringing over” many persons because the Greek for “bringing over” or “brought over” could be read either positively or negatively or neutrally:

. . . the evidence demonstrates that such phrasing could well have been interpreted neutrally, ambiguously, or negatively by one who was so inclined. (Schmidt 2025, 83)

In the end, Schmidt sums up by saying that Josephus meant to describe Jesus “somewhat neutrally”. I’m not sure what “somewhat neutrally” means. What would it mean to describe a referee of a game as “somewhat neutral” or a judge hearing a trial as “somewhat neutral”? Is it like being “somewhat pregnant”?

But here is his point that I want to discuss in this post:

Josephus then uses the ambiguous term ‘brought over’ (ἐπηγάγετο) to describe Jesus leading many Jews and Greeks. This word can be interpreted as connoting deception, exactly like what Jewish leaders accused Jesus of doing according to the Gospel accounts (Matthew 27:63; Luke 23:2; John 7:12, 47, 52). (Schmidt 2025, 208)

And that is important for Schmidt: for Schmidt, the words we read in Josephus have to allow for – and even subtly infer – a negative view of Christianity. So Schmidt continues,

Moreover, the Gospels describe how Jesus’ many followers caused great alarm among Jewish leaders (John 4:1-2) who worried that the ‘whole world’ was going to follow him (John 12:19) and that Jesus would cause a rebellion (Luke 23:1-5, 14). All this is once again corroborated by Josephus’ portrayal of Jesus leading ‘many from among the Jews and many from among the Greeks’ and then being crucified by the Roman governor at the behest of Jewish leaders. The reader of the TF is thus left with a fair impression that Jesus may have been accused of fomenting rebellion . . . (Schmidt 2025, 208 – my bolding)

[Josephus] further preserves the term ἐπηγάγετο [“brought over”] which can be understood as ‘he led astray’.19 (Schmidt 2025, 218)

Notice once again that Schmidt uses passages from the Gospels as evidence of historical words spoken and the historical feelings of Jewish leaders. He interprets Josephus through those gospel narratives. (There are many reasons this is a problematic way to understand Josephus, too many to repeat here though I have discussed them many times elsewhere as part of what consists of basic sound historical method.)

Schmidt cites other scholarly works and references and even other passages in Josephus to establish his claim that by “brought over” Josephus was subtly implying – and that the reader was meant to notice – that Jesus was “leading astray” many followers. Before I demonstrate that all his references and supports fail to make this case, I must explain for most of us the most obvious meaning of the Greek word translated “brought over” (or even possibly “misled” or “led astray”).

The meaning of ἐπηγάγετο

If I say “Mary led the lamb to her school” no-one is going to suspect, because I had spoken of a butcher leading a heifer to his abattoir on another occasion, that Mary was planning to eat her lamb for lunch.

The word translated “brought over” or “led astray” etc is epēgageto (ἐπηγάγετο). It is simply the word for “bring” or “lead” (agō = ἄγω) combined with the preposition for “over” (epi = ἐπί). The base word is thus ἐπάγω, meaning “I bring or lead over”. ἐπηγάγετο is one of the many forms of ἐπάγω. The forms vary according to tense, case, person, number, voice.

One would not expect the word to have any more negative innuendo than the English words for “bring” or “lead”. One can bring or lead others for good or bad reasons. Example:

The guide led/brought the hikers back to his camp.

The bandit led/brought his gang to his hideout.

The word for “led” or “lead” or “brought” does not in itself have a good or bad meaning. Only the context can decide if it is being used to describe a positive or negative action. It is no different with the Greek. If I tell a story of events that “led” many people over many years into tragic circumstances, it does not mean that my use of the word “led” in itself conveys something bad. The next time I use the word “led” could be to convey a completely different type of event, let’s say a very happy one, or simply a neutral one. What counts is the context. If I say “Mary led the lamb to her school” no-one is going to suspect, from those words alone or because I had spoken of a butcher leading a heifer to his abattoir on another occasion that Mary was planning to eat her lamb for lunch.

It is the immediate context that determines the meaning of many of the words we use, not some other context where we used the same words once before.

Josephus: “somewhat” neutral? ambiguous? negative?

Let’s now examine Schmidt’s supporting evidence for his claim that the Greek word for “brought over” can and does, at least for Josephus, suggest the meaning of “led astray” or “misled”.

. . . the potentially negative ‘he brought over’ or ‘he misled’ (ἐπηγάγετο) (Schmidt 2025, 47)

. . . a far more ambiguous or possibly negative valence than the one implied by how scholars have traditionally translated it . . . revolves around the meaning of the Greek word ἐπάγομαι, which can mean ‘to lead’ someone in a neutral sense,¹⁴⁶ or, according to LSJ and the Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, it may have the negative connotations of ‘induce’ or otherwise mislead.¹⁴⁷

¹⁴⁶ For this neutral meaning, see Antiquities 1.263, 2.173.

¹⁴⁷ LSJ, ἐπάγω, II 6; Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, ἐπάγω. So, Thucydides relates how the Argives ‘induced the Spartans to agree’ (ἐπηγάγοντο τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ξυγχωρῆσαι) to a treaty even though it seemed quite foolish; Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 5.41.2 line 8 (= TLG 0003.001). On this interpretation of ἐπάγομαι, see also Bermejo-Rubio, ‘Hypothetical Vorlage’, 354–5; Cernuda, ‘El testimonio flaviano’, 373–4. (Schmidt 2025, 81)

It won’t hurt to keep in mind Schmidt’s acknowledgement that the word can indeed be used neutrally. Here are the examples from Josephus that he cites:

He makes a friendship with him beforehand, bringing Philochus, one of the generals, along. (Antiquities 1.263 – translations are from Perseus Tufts unless otherwise noted)

[ = φιλίαν ἄνωθεν ποιεῖται πρὸς αὐτὸν ἕνα τῶν στρατηγῶν Φίλοχον ἐπαγόμενος. – that is a participial form. Schmidt says this is a “neutral” use of the word but others might even see it as a “positive” use, given its context of friendship.]

Sent alone to Mesopotamia, you gained a good marriage, and returned bringing a multitude of children and wealth. (Antiquities 2.173)

[ = τὴν Μεσοποταμίαν μόνος σταλεὶς γάμων τε ἀγαθῶν ἔτυχες καὶ παίδων ἐπαγόμενος πλῆθος καὶ χρημάτων ἐνόστησας. – again, I am not sure why Schmidt chose to describe this form of the word as connoting a neutral meaning; it looks very positive to me.]

So after acknowledging that the word does not have any intrinsic negative flavour Schmidt must demonstrate that for Josephus and the TF this common rule did not apply.

To establish his point, Schmidt introduces major reference works buttressed by scholarly articles.

LSJ is the abbreviation for the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon. You can see for yourself all of the ways the root word for has been used in ancient Greek literature at LSJ: ἐπάγω. Schmidt directs readers to II 6. The II section, we discover from the abbreviation beside it, Med., lists the way the middle voice form of the word has been used and translated. The middle voice is the form or a verb that indicates it is being applied to or on behalf of oneself: e.g. bringing over for or on behalf of oneself or one’s project (hence my above examples with reference to “his camp”, “his hideout”, “her school” etc.).

II 6 is one of seven examples of how the LSJ observes how our word is used and translated across the literature. Here are those seven:

1 . . . bring to oneself, procure or provide for oneself, . . . devise, invent a means of shunning death . . . .

2 . . . of persons, bring into one’s country, bring in or introduce as allies . . .

3 . . . call them in as witnesses . . . introduce by way of quotation . . . adduce testimonies . . . .

4 . . . bring upon oneself . . . .

5 . . . bring with one . . . .

6 . . . bring over to oneself, win over . . . induce them to concede, Thucydides 5.41. . . . .

7 . . . put in place . . . .

Out of those seven different contextual middle voice meanings of ἐπάγω that are found throughout the literature, Schmidt zeroes in on that one instance from Thucydides 5.41 (see the footnote 147 above). “Induce” sounds sly, cunning. (Leave aside for a moment the fact that Aristotle used the word in the sense of “induce” when describing inductive argument or inductive reasoning.) And Schmidt calls attention to Thucydides describing how a group were “induced” to accept an agreement that was not ultimately in their interests. To reinforce his point he cites articles by Bermejo-Rubio and Cernuda.

1. Bermejo-Rubio . . .

[T]he verb έπάγομαι [another form of ἐπάγω] already has a negative tinge (“bring something bad upon someone’) . . . , and in this context it may carry the meaning of “lead astray” or “seduce.”¹³³ Interestingly, Josephus himself uses the verb έπάγομαι in this negative sense elsewhere (e.g., Ant. 1.207, 6.196,11.199, 17.327). All this is unfortunately overlooked or downplayed by the proponents of a ‘neutral’ text.¹³⁴

¹³³ See. e.g.. Bienert, Jesusbericht. 225; Potscher. “losephus Flavius,’ 33: and Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth.” 170. The verb is used in 2 Peter 2:1 in connection with false prophets ‘bringing’ destruction on themselves.

¹³⁴ Meier. “Jesus in Josephus.” 88. n.33 refers to the possible negative meaning of έχηγάγετο, but rules it out too hastily, not giving supporting references or further reasons for such rejection. What he translates as “And he won over many Jews and many of the Greeks’ is translated by others (e.g., Bammel, Morton Smith. Stanton) as “and he led astray.” (Bermejo-Rubio 2014, 354f)

Now this is finally beginning to look bad for the Jesus we read about in Josephus. Could it really be that the word should be meant to suggest that Jesus was “seducing” or “leading astray” his audience? We saw above that Josephus could use our word in a positive or neutral sense. Here, we are told, he is using it in a negative sense. So we will begin by looking at those other uses in Antiquities that are listed by Bermejo-Rubio. These are all said to convey a “negative sense” of the word – translated variously as “bringing”, “drew”, won over”. I add my comments in italics.

Abraham moved to Gerar of Palestine, bringing Sarah in the guise of a sister, pretending as before because of… (Antiquities 1.207)

[Ἅβραμος δὲ μετῴκησεν εἰς Γέραρα τῆς Παλαιστίνης ἐν ἀδελφῆς ἐπαγόμενος σχήματι τὴν Σάρραν, ὅμοια τοῖς πρὶν ὑποκρινάμενος διὰ τὸν…]

And David, always bringing God with him wherever he arrived… (Antiquities 6.196 – I don’t know why this instance is interpreted in a negative sense)

[Δαυίδης δὲ πανταχοῦ τὸν θεὸν ἐπαγόμενος ὅποι ποτ᾽ ἀφίκοιτο]

“And of all the women, Esther happened to excel—for that was her name—in beauty, and the charm of her face drew the gaze of onlookers even more strongly.” (Antiquities 11.199 – again I don’t know why this is listed as a negative meaning)

[πασῶν δὲ τὴν Ἐσθῆρα συνέβαινεν, τοῦτο γὰρ ἦν αὐτῇ τοὔνομα, τῷ κάλλει διαφέρειν καὶ τὴν χάριν τοῦ προσώπου τὰς ὄψεις τῶν θεωμένων μᾶλλον ἐπάγεσθαι.]

“…he had ceased from deceiving, but having come to Crete, he won over to the faith as many of the Jews as he came into contact with, and having become wealthy through their donations…” (Antiquities 17.327 – here a false prophet, Alexander, is winning over a following)

[… ἀπήλλακτο ἀπατᾶν, ἀλλὰ Κρήτῃ προσενεχθεὶς Ἰουδαίων ὁπόσοις εἰς ὁμιλίαν ἀφίκετο ἐπηγάγετο εἰς πίστιν, καὶ χρημάτων εὐπορηθεὶς δόσει τῇ ἐκείνων ἐπὶ]

For anyone thinking that except for 17.327 these are not strong examples of “bringing over” having a negative meaning, Bermejo-Rubio adds some scholarly references:

Bienert, Jesusbericht. 225;
Pötscher, “losephus Flavius,’ 33;
Stanton, “Jesus of Nazareth” 170.

Let’s look at those.

Bienert:

Original text: Denn diese Formulierung ἐπηγάγετο εἰς πίστιν Ἰουδαίους, ὁπόσοις εἰς ὁμιλίαν ἀφίκετο, legt den Gedanken nahe, daß Jesus in seinem Interesse, für seine Parteibildung, Anhänger geworben habe, während ein Christ doch die Vorstellung hat, daß Jesus die Menschen zu ihrem eigenen Heil für den Glauben geworben habe. Bei ἐπαγόμενος schwingt der Gedanke mit, das Zu-sich-Führen geschehe in irgendeinem Sinne zum persönlichen Vorteil des Subjekts.

For the formulation [“And he won over/brought over many of the Jews, and also many of the Greeks” suggests the idea that Jesus, in his own interest, for the formation of a faction, recruited followers — whereas a Christian would instead maintain that Jesus won people for their own salvation and for faith. With ἐπηγάγετο there is an implicit idea that this bringing-over served in some sense the personal advantage of the subject. (Bienert 1936, 225 – translation)

So Bienert says that a Christian would have written that Jesus won them over to the faith. But Bienert runs into a problem here because Josephus did indeed say, explicitly, that a false prophet, Alexander, won over the following “into the faith” (εἰς πίστιν). So how could a Christian author have written that Jesus was winning over followers to the faith in a good sense? Bienert says that the word for “won over” still had a bad implication simply because it is in the middle voice and therefore it meant that Alexander – and also Jesus – were motivated by devious self-interest. This is butchery of the Greek. Middle voice does not imply a negative motivation. It implies some person does something directly or indirectly for or on behalf of the same person, regardless of motive – such as when Jesus called disciples to follow him. Would a Christian really think such an action as Jesus calling people to follow him, saying “Follow me”, was a deviously self-serving action on the part of Jesus?

Pötscher:

For Pötscher, the word ἐπηγάγετο should be linked with the following sentence, “He was the Christ”, not with the earlier words about his followers. In this case, the word should be translated as “put forward” the idea that He was the Christ. Compare the third meaning in the LSJ II 6 reference above.

Original: έπηγάγετο paßt sogar zu dem unmittelbar Folgenden besser. . . . Ich schlage vor: … έπηγάγετο, ότι ό Χρίστος ούτος ειη [=”He brought him forward, saying that this was the Christ.”]. Die Ände rung ist sehr leicht; εΐη mußte der Christ in ην verbessern, dann konnte das kurze Wort δτι leicht ausfallen.

“ἐπηγάγετο actually fits better with what immediately follows. . . . I propose [the original text read as . . . “He brought him forward, saying that this was the Christ.”]: … ἐπηγάγετο, ὅτι ὁ Χριστὸς οὗτος εἴη. The change is very slight; the Christian copyist had to correct εἴη to ἦν, and then the short word ὅτι could easily drop out. . . . (Pötscher 1975, 33f – translation)

If the primary source material does not support the hypothesis it appears to be accepted practice to hypothesize a change to the source to make it fit. But even so, this particular argument has nothing to do with the notion that the word ἐπηγάγετο conveys a negative meaning. If there is anything negative here it lies in the context, presumably of making a false claim. One can hardly say that the word meaning “put forward” by itself is negative or positive.

Stanton:

Let us start with the final verb, ἐπηγάγετο, translated by Feldman as “he won over,” and by Meier as “he gained a following among.” . . . Bauer’s lexicon gives “bring on” as the meaning of ἐπάγω, and notes that in figurative usage it usually has the sense “bring something bad upon someone.”¹⁹ Hence ἐπηγάγετο in the Testimonium can be understood as “brought trouble to,'” or even “seduce, lead astray.”²⁰

¹⁹ BAGD 281. Josephus Life 18 is a good example of the verb in this [negative] sense. “Win over” is attested in Thucydides and Polybius (see LSJ) and Chrysostom (see G. W. H. Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon), but the verb is rarely used with this positive sense.

²⁰ Bammel notes that significatio seditionis is possible for ἐπάγομαι (“Testimonium Flavianum,” Judaica, 179-81). Meier acknowledges that this is “a possible, though not necessary, meaning of the verb,” but does not give supporting references or reasons for rejecting this translation (“Jesus in Josephus,” 88 n. 33). M. Smith, Jesus the Magician (London: Victor Gollancz, 1978) 178, translates “lead astray” and claims that this sense is implied by the Greek text. (Stanton 1994, 170)

Look first at Bauer’s Lexicon. Yes, this lexicon does say that the word in the middle voice can have the figurative use meaning of “bring something [mostly bad] upon someone”. The only difficulty here, however, is that in Josephus’s passage about Jesus he is not using the word figuratively!

Bauer gives examples of the figurative use:

Hesiod, Works and Days 240

But upon them from heaven the son of Cronos brought a great bane —
famine and plague together — and the people perished.

τοῖσιν δ᾽ οὐρανόθεν μέγ᾽ ἐπήγαγε πῆμα Κρονίων
λιμὸν ὁμοῦ καὶ λοιμόν: ἀποφθινύθουσι δὲ λαοί.

Here is the complete Bauer reference where I highlight some other sources with the figurative use:

ἐπάγω 1 aor. ptc. έπάξας (Bl-D. §75 w. app.; Mit -H. 226: Rob. 348); 2 aor. ἐπἠγαγον (Hom. +; inscr., Philo.9 pap., LXX, Philo, Joseph., Test. 12 Patr.) bring on; fig. bring someth. upon someone, mostly someth, bad τινἰ τι (Hes., Op. 240 πῆμά τινi έ. al.; Dit., Or. 669, 43 πολλοῖς ἐ. κινδύνους; PRyl. 144, 21 [38 AD] . . . μοι ἐ.αἰτίας; Bar 4:9 10,14, 29; Da 3: 28, 31; Philo, Mos. 1, 96; Jos. Vi. 18; Sib. Or. 7, 154) κατακλυσμόν κόσμῳ έπάξας 2 Pt 2:5 (cf. Gen 6: 17; 3 Macc 2: 4 of the deluge ἐπάγαγὼν αὐτοῖς ἀμέτρητου ὗδωρ). λύπην τῷ πνεύματι bring grief upon the spirit Hm 3: 4. ἑαυτοῖς ταχινὴν ἀπώλειαν bring swift destruction upon themselves Pt 2: 1 (cf. ἑαυτοῖς δουλείαν Demosth. 19, 259). Also ἐπί τινά τι (Ex 11:1; 33: 5; Jer 6:19; Ezk 28:7 and oft.) ἐφ’ ἡμάᾶς τὸ αἶμα τ. ἀνθρώπου τούτου bring this man’s blood upon us Ac 5:28 (cf. Judg 9: 24 B ἐπαγαγεῖν τὰ αἵματα αὐτῶν, τοῦ θεῖναι ἐπὶ Ἀβιμελεχ, ὃs ἀπέκειvev αὐτούς), έ. τισὶ διωyμὸv κατά τινος stir up, within a group, a persecution against someone Ac 14: 2 D. M-M. (Bauer and Arndt 2021, 281 — I don’t think there is any instrinsic negative shift in meaning to ἐπάγω because of the figurative use: rather, I suspect that it is more common to speak of calamaties being brought upon us than it is good things.)

The Bauer lexicon and Stanton point to another figurative use of the word in Josephus’s Life, section 18, and again it is definitely with a negative sense:

[and desired them] not rashly, and after the most foolish manner, to bring on the dangers of the most terrible mischiefs upon their country, upon their families, and upon themselves.

καὶ μὴ προπετῶς καὶ παντάπασιν ἀνοήτως πατρίσι καὶ γενεαῖς καὶ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς τὸν περὶ τῶν ἐσχάτων κακῶν κίνδυνον ἐπάγειν.

But there is nothing figurative about Josephus’s use of the word relating to Jesus. Jesus is not bringing down plagues or war or terror or even riches and rewards. He is literally, not figuratively, bringing people to himself by means of his teaching.

Stanton offers other examples, Polybius and Thucydides, where the word is used and notes it is there it is used with a positive sense. We can note that the difference is with Polybius and Thucydides we meet a literary and not a figurative use. Stanton can only comment that “the verb is rarely used with this positive sense”. Presumably he is thinking of the many figurative usages.

Notice how positive in meaning Polybius’s use really is:

Polybius 7:14.4, cited in the LSJ (Liddell Scott Jones Greek-English Lexicon) reference:

. . . having employed Aratus as guide in general matters, he neither wronged nor even caused distress to any of those on the island, but held all the Cretans under his control, and brought all the Greeks over to goodwill toward himself through the dignity of his character.

. . . καὶ γὰρ ἐπ᾽ ἐκείνων Ἀράτῳ μὲν καθηγεμόνι χρησάμενος περὶ τῶν ὅλων, οὐχ οἷον ἀδικήσας, ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ λυπήσας οὐδένα τῶν κατὰ τὴν νῆσον, ἅπαντας μὲν εἶχε τοὺς Κρηταιεῖς ὑποχειρίους, ἅπαντας δὲ τοὺς Ἕλληνας εἰς τὴν πρὸς αὑτὸν εὔνοιαν ἐπήγετο διὰ τὴν σεμνότητα τῆς προαιρέσεως.

So we have a non-figurative use of the word and one can scarcely imagine a more positive meaning: “brought all the Greeks over to goodwill toward himself through the dignity of his character”.

The same reference, LSJ, gives this example of Thucydides’ use, also singled out by Stanton that he concedes also carries positive innuendo:

Thucydides 5:45

Upon the envoys speaking in the senate upon these points, and stating that they had come with full powers to settle all others at issue between them, Alcibiades became afraid that if they were to repeat these statements to the popular assembly, they might gain the multitude, and the Argive alliance might be rejected,

καὶ λέγοντες ἐν τῇ βουλῇ περί τε τούτων καὶ ὡς αὐτοκράτορες ἥκουσι περὶ πάντων ξυμβῆναι τῶν διαφόρων, τὸν Ἀλκιβιάδην ἐφόβουν μὴ καί, ἢν ἐς τὸν δῆμον ταῦτα λέγωσιν, ἐπαγάγωνται τὸ πλῆθος καὶ ἀπωσθῇ ἡ Ἀργείων ξυμμαχία.

This is a good time to look at another passage in Thucydides, one that Schmidt identifies as conveying a negative sense of “inducing” (with a tinge of deceit) the Spartans to agree to a foolish treaty.

Thucydides 5.41.2

Arrived in Sparta, the Argive representatives discussed with the Spartans the conditions for a treaty. . . . The Spartans . . . said that, if Argos would agree, they were prepared to accept the same terms as in the previous treaty. Nevertheless the Argive representatives managed in the end to get the Spartans to agree to the following arrangement . . . (Rex Warner’s translation)

καὶ οἱ πρέσβεις ἀφικόμενοι αὐτῶν λόγους ἐποιοῦντο πρὸς τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἐφ᾽ ᾧ ἂν σφίσιν αἱ σπονδαὶ γίγνοιντο. καὶ . . . ἔπειτα δ᾽ οὐκ ἐώντων Λακεδαιμονίων μεμνῆσθαι περὶ αὐτῆς, ἀλλ᾽, εἰ βούλονται σπένδεσθαι ὥσπερ πρότερον, ἑτοῖμοι εἶναι, οἱ Ἀργεῖοι πρέσβεις τάδε ὅμως ἐπηγάγοντο τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ξυγχωρῆσαι . . .

Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of making the treaty, the use of the Greek word for “bringing over/getting to agree/induced/winning over” is describing an event of mutual negotiations, of diplomatic statecraft. There is no inherent suggestion that the word implies any deceit.

Finally, Stanton directs us to Chrysostom. Following Lampe’s A Patristic Greek Lexicon we find the passage is in the 28th Homily to Hebrews:

Chrysostom Homily to Hebrews 28, 263B

Tell me: who attracts more attention in the marketplaces—the one who brings along many, or the one who brings along few?
But of the one who brings along few, is she not the one who appears more modest and less conspicuous?

Εἰπέ μοι· τίς ἐπιστρέφει τοὺς ἐπ’ ἀγορὰς, ἡ πολλοὺς ἐπαγομένη, ἢ ἡ ὀλίγους;
ταύτης δὲ τῆς ὀλίγους ἐπαγομένης, οὐχὶ ἡ μᾶλλον ἀπρόοπτος φαινομένη;

As Stanton notes, there is no negative meaning instrinsic to the word in question here.

Thus far we have followed Schmidt’s references to the LSJ, the Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, a passage in Thucydides and his appeal to an article by Bermejo-Rubio. We conclude with a look at the article by Cernuda that he also appeals to.

2. Cernuda . . .

Original: También ἔπάγομαι se podría haber empleado en mal sentido⁸⁰. Así se ha sostenido también que era el caso⁸¹. . .

ἐπάγομαι itself could also be used in a negative sense⁸⁰. It has thus also been argued that such is the case here⁸¹ . . . (Cernuda 1997, 373f – translation)

I learned long ago to always check the footnotes. Devils often lurk in such details. And we find them once again here. These devils are actually denying Schmidt his interpretation of “brought over”. Continuing with the translation, and with my own bolded highlighting added:

Original: ⁸⁰ Cf. infra. Bammel (“Zum TF”, nota 25) atribuye a K. Linck ejemplos de ἔπάγομαι con significación negativa; pero los cuatro casos que éste presenta de Josefo son absolutamente inofensivos, y ésa era su intención, pues lo que hizo Linck, en contra de lo que supone Bammel, es impugnar la pretensión de los que supponere student significationem seditionis. […] Sed hic sensus eius verbi nulla re probatur, nedum postuletur (De antiquissimis veterum quae ad Jesum Nazarenum spectant testimoniis [Giessen 1913] 24).
⁸¹ Es la postura que adoptó Reinach, perdiendo la debida imparcialidad semántica: “le verbe ἐπηγάγετο ‘il séduisit’, qui ne s’emploie qu’en mauvaise part et raille l’accusation de séduction portée contre Jésus […]; ἐπηγάγετο = pellicere […] un des vestiges les plus caractéristiques du ton hostile de la rédaction primitive” (“Josè”, 7 y 11). La reacción de Pelletier no pudo ser más justa: “En réalité, la nuance péjorative n’est habituelle que pour le verbe pellicere, employé ici par la traduction latine anonyme, et non pour le verbe grec que figure dans Josèphe” (“Témoignage”, 190).

⁸⁰ Cf. infra. Bammel (“Zum TF,” note 25) attributes to K. Linck examples of ἐπάγομαι with negative meaning. But the four examples Linck gives from Josephus are completely irrelevant, and that was his intention: for what Linck did—contrary to what Bammel supposes—was to refute the claim of those who studiously assume a seditious meaning for the verb: “But this meaning of the verb is not supported by any evidence, nor is it required” (De antiquissimis veterum quae ad Jesum Nazarenum spectant testimoniis, Giessen 1924, p. 13).

⁸¹ This is the position adopted by Reinach, who lost proper semantic neutrality: “The verb ἐπηγάγετο, ‘he seduced,’ which is only ever used pejoratively, mocks the accusation of seduction leveled against Jesus […]. ἐπηγάγετο = pellicere [to seduce] is one of the most characteristic remnants of the hostile tone of the primitive redaction” (“Josè”, pp. 7 and 11). Pelletier’s response could not have been more justified: “In reality, the pejorative nuance is habitual only for the Latin verb pellicere, used here by the anonymous Latin translator, and not for the Greek verb found in Josephus” (“Témoignage,” p. 190).

Cernuda’s article thus actually contradicts Schmidt’s claim that Josephus had a negative intent in mind when he used the word of Jesus. It appears Schmidt failed to notice Cernuda’s devilish footnotes.

Bibliography

Bauer, Walter, William Arndt, Felix Wilbur Gingrich, and Frederick W. Danker. 1979. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature 2nd Ed. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bermejo-Rubio, Fernando. 2014. “Was the Hypothetical ‘Vorlage’ of the ‘Testimonium Flavianum’ a ‘Neutral’ Text? Challenging the Common Wisdom on ‘Antiquitates Judaicae’ 18.63-64.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 45 (3): 326–65.
Bienert, Walther. 1936. Der älteste nichtchristliche Jesusbericht, Josephus über Jesus : unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des altrussischen “Josephus.” Halle : Akademischer Verlag.
Cernuda, Antonio Vicent. 1997. “El Testimonio Flaviano, Alarde De Solapada Ironía.” Estudios Bíblicos 55 (3, 4): 355–85, 479–508.
Chrysostomi, Joannnis. 1862. In Dive Pauli Epistolam ad Hebraeos Homiliae. Oxford: Parker. http://archive.org/details/chrysostom_pauline_homilies_field_vol_7.
Ehrman, Bart D. 2013. Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. New York: HarperOne.
Hurtado. 2012. “On Competence, Scholarly Authority, and Open Discussion (and ” the Data “).” Larry Hurtado’s Blog (blog). August 2, 2012. https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/on-competence-scholarly-authority-and-open-discussion/.
Lampe, G.W.H. ed. 1961. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. 1996. A Greek–English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Montanari, Franco. 2015. The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek. Leiden: Brill.
Schmidt, T. C. 2025. Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Continues with Part 5 (pending)

2025-07-01

Pitfalls in Seeking Authenticity in Ancient Texts

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Biblical scholars are not a unique species. Though many of them do seem to be unaware that they are presenting a one-sided view of the evidence, and indeed they are often blind to the logical flaws in their arguments, but they are not alone. As I recently posted here:

I have in the past few months discovered that this is not a flaw restricted to biblical scholars. I have encountered the same wishful thinking and flawed methods of argument among Classicists who desperately seem to want a certain first hand account of a Christian martyr, and woman as well, to be authentic. So I have to have a bit more understanding of the foibles of biblical scholars, I guess.

Saint Perpetua (Image from Lessons From A Monastery)

Below is my essay that illustrates exactly how some Classicists in a certain niche area of study display some of the same kinds of flaws as biblical scholars. The blemishes too easily come to the fore when scholars believe they are face to face with the earliest evidence for Christian origins and therefore want to find ways to accept a core base of those sources as authentic — rather than accept the fictional character that is normally associated with that kind of evidence.

Perpetua was a female Christian martyr in Carthage in the year 202 CE. You can read a little about her and the account of her last days attributed to her on Wikipedia. I will add a few side boxes to supplement my original essay where I think it might make it more useful for general readers. (The original essay was submitted as an assignment task in a course I am currently undertaking at Macquarie University.)

How Historians Have Engaged With Perpetua’s Account of Her Final Days in The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity

It seems a wise principle that the burden of proof rests on those who doubt or reject the textual data from antiquity, not on those who accept them. . . . [T]he proof must be provided by those who question the ancient data.^[1]

In response to the above words of Vinzent Hunink, this essay seeks to demonstrate that several arguments for the authenticity of Perpetua’s authorship of her prison experiences in The Passion Of Saints Perpetua And Felicity (Passio) are flawed logically and lack the independent support historians normally rely on to establish ancient claims. In doing so I will refer to alternative approaches of other historians. By authenticity I mean the proposition that the author of Perpetua’s account in the Passio was the historical Perpetua martyred at Carthage around 203 CE.

Hunink provides three grounds for accepting the authenticity of Perpetua’s prison diary:

(a) its “marked stylistic features and personal details”,
(b) Hunink’s inability to imagine a reason for it not being written by Perpetua,
(c) and the Passio’s statement that Perpetua wrote her account.^[2]

In objecting to doubts whether Perpetua was an actual author, he writes

there should be grave, compelling reasons to make us reject the evidence from antiquity as far as authorship is concerned.^[3]

Hunink is here equating “the textual/ancient data” (i.e. the written document) from which we build a hypothesis (i.e. that it was authored by such-and-such) with the “evidence” called upon to test that hypothesis. It is circular to claim that the data explained by our hypothesis itself is the evidence that confirms our hypothesis. This particular protest against doubts is logically flawed.

Jacqueline Amat’s critical edition and discussion of the Passio is widely cited and a work to which scholars have been said to owe a “permanent and immeasurable debt” for its “outstanding” contribution.^[4] I will therefore refer repeatedly to her work. Amat stresses the authenticity of Perpetua’s account by appealing to

(a) its independently verified historical context;
(b) its literary style;
(c) and the realism of her dreams.

Amat thus recognizes the importance of providing an independently verifiable and datable historical context:

= Severus ordered the persecution of all new converts. The arrest of Perpetua and her companions therefore fits within a policy of repression against catechumens.

Sévère ordonnait de poursuivre tous les nouveaux convertis. L’arrestation de Perpétue et de ses compagnons s’insère donc dans une politique de répression des catéchumènes.^[5]

Amat points to Eusebius, the Historia Augusta, and works by J. Moreau and W.H.C. Frend to learn of this specific repression. Unfortunately none of these references provides the external support Amat seeks. Eusebius has been judged (a) as relying more on his ability to invent a history “the way it should have been” according to his apologetic perspectives^[6] and (b) as being motivated for personal reasons to dwell on multiplying and glorifying instances of martyrdoms.^[7] Moreau and Frend use tentative language when speaking of the edict: “Les modalités d’application de l’édit de 202 sont mal connues dans le détail”;^[8] “Eusebius was largely ignorant of events in the west”, “for the sake of dramatic effect”, “do not contradict”, “ring of truth”, “balance of probabilities”, “falls short of proof”, “relatively truthful”, “circumstantial evidence”.^[9] By identifying this edict with the one reported of Severus in Historia Augusta, moreover, Amat contradicts the statement by Timothy Barnes that it is “demonstrably fictitious”.^[10] This is striking since Amat relies on Barnes in the same journal of the previous year to establish her next point. By overlooking studies from the 1960s that address reasons to doubt the historicity of the Severus decree, even concluding it “to be an historical fiction”,^[11] Amat’s reading of the evidence is over-selective. Finally, the Passio itself indicates that Perpetua was deeply knowledgeable in the Bible so one must wonder if she had been the kind of new convert the decree supposedly targeted.

The next independently attested item cited is the matching of Perpetua’s date of martyrdom with the birthday of Geta, information that arguably could only have been known to a contemporary of Perpetua given the state-ordered erasure of all memory of Geta after his death. While Amat relies on the argument of Barnes here,^[12] Ellen Muehlberger points out that Barnes’ case is based on one manuscript that differs from others.^[13] Amat appeals to J. A. Robinson’s surmise that copyists removed the name Geta in light of the damnatio memoriae.^[14] Like Hunink, Amat is effectively claiming as evidence for the hypothesis the data the hypothesis claims to explain – that Passio was composed in the time of Geta. A genuinely independent assessment of the hypothesis (assuming that the name Geta was in the original work) would also compare other possible explanations that posit the flavour of historicity being a literary artifice – as provided by Thomas Heffernan:

[T]he redactor is at pains throughout the narrative to provide historical veracity . . . so as to promote [Perpetua’s] value as being equal to the “old examples of the faith” . . . . The allusion to Geta thus complements the redactor’s historicizing intent, which is to legitimate the New Prophecy among his fellow communicants.^[15]

Ironically, in making this point, Heffernan attributes to Perpetua an authentic voice behind words that conflict with it—an inconsistency more easily explained by a single author.

The final appeal to independent verification for the authenticity of the Passio is the assertion that Perpetua’s contemporary Tertullian mentions it.^[16] Tertullian may indeed have known of the Passio but his actual words can only be taken as a reference to the text if one already assumes that it existed in his time:

= How is it that Perpetua, most valiant martyr, saw only martyrs there in her vision of paradise on the day of her passion, unless it is because the sword that guards the gate of paradise yields to no one except those who have died in Christ, not in Adam?

Quomodo Perpetua, fortissima martyr, sub die passionis in reuelatione paradisi solos illic martyras uidit, nisi quia nullis romphaea paradisi ianitrix cedit nisi qui in Christo decesserint, non in Adam?^[17]

That Tertullian confuses the dreams of Perpetua and Saturus in the Passio is forgiven by Amat and other scholars as normal human memory lapse. The data does not fit so it is forgiven and still interpreted as confirming the hypothesis. A more rigorous investigation ought to consider an alternative proposal that potentially has wider explanatory power: that Tertullian knew of a free-floating Perpetua story that was later written down. That alternative is able to explain not only Tertullian’s contradiction but also the apparent loss of the Passio until the time of Augustine who initially expressed doubts about its authenticity.^[18]

Thus Amat’s attempts at setting a historical date and context for the Passio begin with the assumption that it contains an authentic historical account and then set aside contrary independent evidence and explanations.

To avoid circularity it is necessary to turn to relevant external or independent data. This is the approach of Ellen Meuhlberger:

On this point about Augustine — I failed to address the fact that Augustine is also evidence of public commemoration of Perpetua and Felicity being observed prior to his time. This failure could be seen as my own “lack of balance” in the discussion at this point.

The most valuable tool readers have to contextualize any text is its reception. . . . The first writer to make precise reference to Perpetua’s account is Augustine of Hippo . . . of the fifth century. . . .^[19]

Not only do we have no indisputable evidence that the Passio existed until the fourth century, but when we do find it mentioned, it happens to express the ideas found in other texts of that later time:

. . . a text that expresses themes evidenced in the fourth and fifth centuries may well itself be a product of the fourth and fifth centuries.^[20]

Since Robinson the primary argument that has reportedly swayed most scholars to embrace authenticity has been about Perpetua’s style.^[21] But what is it about this style that convinces? For Amat, authenticity is demonstrated by “strikingly beautiful” words in the face of death, so beautiful that they “can hardly be considered apocryphal”:

= She is sustained by the certainty that at the moment of her passion Christ will be at her side, and this conviction inspires a very beautiful response—one that cannot be believed to be apocryphal (15.6).

Elle est soutenue par la certitude qu’au moment de sa passion le Christ sera à ses côtés et ce sentiment lui dicte une fort belle réponse, qu’on ne peut croire apocryphe (15, 6).^[22]

Yet two pages earlier Amat had appealed to content far from beautiful as grounds for believing the work to be authentic:

= Saturus faces martyrdom with his flaws [namely, a pride that is somewhat too haughty and an intransigence that is somewhat too biting], and this is a sign of the narrative’s authenticity.

Saturus affronte le martyre avec ses défauts [sc. d’une fierté un peu trop orgueilleuse, d’une intransigeance un peu trop mordante] et c’est là un gage de l’authenticité du récit.^[23]

So both beautiful and the less beautiful are felt to be signs of authenticity. Here we are surely encountering another instance where a case is “guided by a telos of confirmation, rather than exploration.”^[24]

A different stylistic feature is identified as a marker of authenticity by Brent Shaw. Not strong beauty or the introduction of embarrassing character flaws but the plain, prosaic “simple reportage” of her experiences, an “unmediated self-perception, her reality” now becomes the stylistic evidence of authenticity:

Perpetua’s words . . . differ so much in the fundamental aspect of simple reportage from all other so-called “martyr acts” . . . . Hers is a direct account of actual human experience, a piece of reportage stripped of … illusory rhetorical qualities . . . . [T[here is something, perhaps ineffable, that marks her words as different in kind from any comparable piece of literature from antiquity.^[25]

Amat saw both the sublime and the flawed as witnesses of authenticity; Shaw appeals to unadorned “simple reportage”. Yet in a footnote Shaw concedes that the simplicity and directness of the language could after all be “the result of conscious or semiconscious ‘rhetorical’ strategies as much as anything else”.^[26] Such a concession surely undermines his main point that the simplicity of the account was the sure sign of it being of direct and unmediated reportage.

Even scholars who have discerned aspects of style that were not likely penned by Perpetua have still clung to the view of Perpetua being the ultimate author, suggesting that she knowingly left her words to be adapted by recorders or editors.^[27] (See the quote at note 15 above.) Such scenarios look like ad hoc attempts to maintain a case for authenticity as appreciation for stylistic features has deepened since Robinson.

Eric Dodds is also convinced that Perpetua’s account is authentic by

(a) the simplicity of style,
(b) it being “entirely free from marvels” (he overlooks the miraculous cessation of lactation)
(c) and its dreams being “entirely dreamlike”.^[28]

Where “another author”, the redactor, has provided an account that complements or comments on Perpetua’s statement both Dodds and Shaw cannot imagine that these additions might be part of a common project to produce the Passio.

[T]his unmediated self-perception, her reality, was subsequently appropriated by a male editor . . .^[29]

[C]ertain incidents appear to have been introduced in order to provide a fulfilment of prophecy. . . .^[30]

Shaw and Dodds, on the presumption of authenticity, thus treat Perpetua’s journal without reference to “the textual data” of the Passio’s whole.

Two scholars against whom Hunink was protesting when he appealed for a prima facie acceptance of the “textual data” actually are more consistent in their acceptance of that data than Dodds and Shaw. Shira Lander and Ross Kraemer accept the Passio as a literary unity and accordingly find a two-way dialogue between Perpetua’s story and its surrounding text that is suggestive of a unity Shaw and Dodds deny:

[T]he startling degree to which details of the Passio conform to the biblical citation of Joel 2:28–29/Acts 2:17–18 in the prologue . . . contributes to our concerns. It is possible, indeed perhaps tempting, to read the Passio in its present form as a narrative dramatization of this citation . . . . Many elements of the Passio conform closely to the particulars of this prophecy. . . . The extraordinary emphasis on Perpetua’s role as a daughter . . . . coheres exceedingly well with the characterization of the female prophets as daughters.^[31]

Whether one accepts this interpretation or not, it can be acknowledged that it is firmly grounded on Hunink’s “textual data” itself. Surely any “textual data” can only be fully understood if read in the context of the literary heritage of its author, or with reference to texts independent of the one being studied. Authenticity is a proposition that needs to be argued, not assumed.

Hunink was focussed on the content of the Passio (e.g. noting the editorial claim that Perpetua wrote her own story). He failed to appreciate the way the Passio “worked” as a literary composition. As Megan DeVore noted, Hunink allowed the flaws in Erin Ronsse’s article to blind him from her more substantial point: its literary sophistication. Ronsse attempted to make this point by detaching it from the question of authenticity but the authenticity question could not be ignored.^[32] DeVore takes the literary unity of the Passio much farther by identifying intertextuality with other early Christian texts and engagement with teachings and images in Clement of Alexandria and Hermas. It is the editorial frames that work with Perpetua’s account to create a “collective memory” because of their allusions to other early Christian literature. For DeVore (and as I mentioned above) a richer understanding of any literary work requires reading it in the context of other works of its era and in the light of ancient rhetorical theory.^[33] DeVore even treats Perpetua as an authentic author,^[34] but an argument for literary sophistication undermines the reasons others have believed in authenticity.

One detail illustrates how different assumptions lead to different conclusions over authenticity. Dodds was confident that Perpetua’s dream of being given cheese was a sure sign that the dream could not be “a pious fiction” since the image had no relevance to Christianity at the time.^[35] DeVore, however, by widening the frame of reference through which we read the Passio shows that cheese did indeed have directly relevant Christian symbolic meaning in Clement’s Paedagogos.^[36] The image was there to be deployed by Perpetua or any other author.

Peter Dronke illustrates the dilemma arising when simplicity of style is taken as the rationale for authenticity. Dronke cannot ignore “the writer’s artistry” but feels uncomfortable that he notices it at all. What is “artless” is “artistry”. He dares not praise it.

From the outset we see that Perpetua . . . is not striving to be literary. There are no rhetorical flourishes, no attempts at didacticism or edification. The dialogue is (I think deliberately) artless in its shaping . . . . [S]he was recording her own outer and inner world . . . with shining immediacy. . . . Where writing wells up out of such fearsome events, it seems impertinent, or shallow at best, even to praise the writer’s artistry. . . . [S]he did not try to make her experience exemplary.^[37]

If “deliberate”, surely it cannot be said to be “artless”, and if it did not seek to be edifying, one must ask why it was read for edification among believers through the centuries.

Many authors have long understood the potential power of a simple narration and Dronke seems to be torn between being guiltily impressed by “the writer’s artistry” and a contradictory belief that it fundamentally really is what it strives to be without literary manufacture. But literary art with emotional impact does not have to be infused with baroque flourishes. It can appear very simple and natural. Megan DeVore shows how Perpetua’s account of herself coheres with literary principles set out by Aristotle. What appears brief and disjointed in the narrative – “lacking literary artifice”, one might say – can draw a reader in to appreciate the nobleness of Perpetua’s character:

While . . . narrative of section 9 seems prima facie to be little more than a disjointed rendering of two events, the seemingly laconic section relays a significant rhetorical antithesis and further develops the image of Perpetua for her audience.^[38]

Perpetua’s dreams have also been viewed as evidence of authenticity, and again we find sometimes contradictory reasons in arguing for this case. For the Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz the authenticity of the dreams was seen in the fact that the images were not exclusively Christian:

= As for the authenticity of the visions . . . it may be pointed out that in all the visions not a single purely Christian motif appears; rather, they consist entirely of archetypal images that were common to the pagan, Gnostic, and Christian imaginative worlds of the time. . .

Was . . . [die] Echtheit der Visionen anbelangt . . . läßt sich . . . darauf hinweisen, daß in allen Visionen kein einziges rein christliches Motiv auftaucht, sondern lauter archetypische Bilder, die der damaligen heidnischen, gnostischen und christlichen Vorstellungswelt gemeinsam waren . . .^[39]

For Shaw “there is no reasonable question of their authenticity”.^[40] For Amat, the dreams are “realistic” and therefore they should not be deemed fabricated:

= But it must be emphasized that, like true dreams, they exhibit both syncretism and subjectivity. One can therefore dismiss the hypothesis that these accounts are fabrications. They undeniably bear the mark of lived memories.

Mais, il faut y insister, des songes véritables, elles ont le syncrétisme et la subjectivité. On peut donc écarter l’hypothèse . . . selon laquelle ces récits seraient des affabulations . . . . Ils portent indéniablement la trace de souvenirs vécus.^[41]

Amat refers to Franz’s view but adds, contradicting Franz, that it is their Christian frames of reference that make them, in part, the evidence of their reality. Amat stresses the mix of lived experiences and “de souvenirs littéraires ou scripturaires” that supplant pagan associations:

= But pagan culture surfaces only faintly beneath its Christian and scriptural adaptation. . . . The scriptural elements are more allusive in Perpetua’s dreams: details drawn from the Apocalypse are joined to Jacob’s ladder, the serpent from Genesis, and the abyss from the Gospel of Luke.

Mais la culture païenne ne fait qu’affleurer sous son adaptation chrétienne et scripturaire. . . . Les éléments scripturaires sont plus allusifs dans les songes de Perpétue : les details issus de l’Apocalypse s’unissent à l’échelle de Jacob, au serpent de la Genèse ou à l’abîme de l’Évangile de Luc.^[42]

It is natural to assume that a Christian martyr would have biblical images on her mind but in favour of Franz’s view is the point that Perpetua was apparently a new convert so it might be fair to question the extent of her biblical knowledge. Does Amat’s Perpetua know the Bible too well? While conflicting explanations do not per se negate authenticity, they invite scrutiny of potential confirmation bias.

In her discussion of the dreams it is difficult to tell if Amat is speaking for the beliefs of the authors and editors of the Passio or for herself and her audience when she writes:

= Such a mixture [i.e., of lived memories and scriptural memories] is characteristic of genuine dream manifestations. This observation in no way undermines the notion of revelation. The Spirit, in order to make itself heard, passes through all the images that lie within the dreamer’s consciousness.

[U]n tel mélange [sc. souvenirs vécus and de souvenirs scripturaires] caractérise les véritables manifestations oniriques. Ce constat n’entame nullement la notion de révélation. L’Esprit passe, pour se faire entendre, par toutes les images qui reposent dans la conscience des songeurs.^[43]

If the latter, we can understand the pull of wanting Perpetua’s words to be historically authentic. But motive aside, it is widely understood that realism of description does not necessarily establish authenticity.^[44]

One more facet in the study of the Passio that has been used to argue for a female author, and by implication the Perpetua of the diary herself,^[45] is the motif of breast-feeding and lactation.

The Passio includes references to breastfeeding from a lactating woman’s point of view; . . . symptoms . . . including anxiety, pain, and engorgement . . .^[46]

The references certainly express a “woman’s point of view”, but the question of authenticity of Perpetua’s account is not necessarily tied to the gender of the author. On the other hand, Dova also observes that “there is a wealth of evidence about wet-nursing in Perpetua’s time”, so it is reasonable to expect that some men were quite aware of what it involved. More significant, however, are Perkins and DeVore noting that imagery of nursing mothers and infant feeding was well established in early Christian writings:

[E]mphasis on lactation and parturition . . . are so rhetorically pertinent to the discourse of the period in Carthage as evidenced by Tertullian as to make suspect the women’s authenticity as real persons.^[47]

I suspect that, in her references to nourishment and lactation, Perpetua participates far more in common symbolic imagery than in a personally cathartic diurnal divulgence.^[48]

For a good number of scholars the Passio is a unique document, a primary source to inform us directly of the mind of a martyr and of a woman in the third century Roman empire,^[49] as well as being an inspiration for all, especially for women, as a testimony of courage and independence of spirit.^[50] These are strong reasons for wanting an ancient source to be both unique and authentic. Other historians have warned against the professional hazards of being seduced into accepting sources as historically reliable^[51] and naively embracing texts at face value.^[52]

I have attempted to single out a few areas where scholars take different approaches to reading the Passio. My focus has been on what I consider to be some of the shortcomings underlying an acceptance of Perpetua’s account as “authentic”. I have sought to do this by identifying flawed reasoning, a tendency to find confirmation of authenticity in various textual and independent data without examining alternative explanations for the same data, a failure to address the rhetorical methods that create the emotional impact on reading the Passio, and a limited appeal to the literary context of the early Christian centuries.

Notes

[1] Hunink, “Did Perpetua Write Her Prison Account?,” 150, 152.

[2] Hunink, 150, 152.

[3] Hunink, 150.

[4] Farina, Perpetua of Carthage, 6f.

[5] Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes : Introduction, Texte Critique, Traduction Commentaire et Index, 21.

[6] Droge, “The Apologetic Dimensions of the Ecclesiastical History,” 506.

[7] Grant, Eusebius as Church Historian, 165.

[8] Moreau, La Persécution du Christianisme dans L’Empire Romain, 81.

[9] Frend, “A Severan Persecution? Evidence of the « Historia Augusta »,” 470.

[10] Barnes, “Tertullian’s ‘Scorpiace,’” 130.

[11] Kitzler, From Passio Perpetuae to Acta Perpetuae : Recontextualizing a Martyr Story in the Literature of the Early Church, 15, note 59.

[12] Barnes, “Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum,” 509–31.

[13] Muehlberger, “Perpetual Adjustment: The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and the Entailments of Authenticity,” 323.

[14] Robinson, The Passion of S. Perpetua, 25.

[15] Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 76f.

[16] Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes : Introduction, Texte Critique, Traduction Commentaire et Index, 20.

[17] Tertullian, “De Anima,” LV 4.

[18] Muehlberger, “Perpetual Adjustment: The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and the Entailments of Authenticity,” 325–27.

[19] Muehlberger, 333.

[20] Muehlberger, 338.

[21] Butler, The New Prophecy and “New Visions,” 47. Butler sees both Robinson’s and Shewring’s analysis of style as paving the way for the near consensus on authenticity, but Robinson is discussed as the lead figure.

[22] Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes : Introduction, Texte Critique, Traduction Commentaire et Index, 35.

[23] Amat, 33.

[24] Muehlberger, “Perpetual Adjustment: The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and the Entailments of Authenticity,” 324.

[25] Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” 19, 22, 45.

[26] Shaw, 20, note 50.

[27] Heffernan, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, 76; DeVore, “Narrative Traditioning and Allusive Gesturing,” 236.

[28] Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, 49f, 52.

[29] Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” 20f.

[30] Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, 49.

[31] Lander and Kraemer, “Perpetua and Felicitas,” 984.

[32] Ronsse, “Rhetoric of Martyrs,” 385.

[33] DeVore, “Narrative Traditioning and Allusive Gesturing,” 36ff.

[34] DeVore, 230–31.

[35] Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, 51.

[36] DeVore, “Narrative Traditioning and Allusive Gesturing,” 147.

[37] Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete, 1, 6, 16f.

[38] DeVore, “Narrative Traditioning and Allusive Gesturing,” 172f.

[39] Franz, “Die Passio Perpetuae. Versuch Einer Psychologischen Deutung,” 411.

[40] Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” 26.

[41] Amat, Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes : Introduction, Texte Critique, Traduction Commentaire et Index, 42.

[42] Amat, 42, 45.

[43] Amat, 42.

[44] Johnson, “Third Maccabees: Historical Fictions and the Shaping of Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Period,” 196f; Van den Heever, “Novel and Mystery: Discourse, Myth, and Society,” 93f; Woodman, Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies, 23–28.

[45] Cotter-Lynch, Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages, 19.

[46] Dova, “Lactation Cessation and the Realities of Martyrdom in The Passion of Saint Perpetua,” 260.

[47] Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era, 160.

[48] DeVore, “Narrative Traditioning and Allusive Gesturing,” 125.

[49] Rader, “The Martyrdom of Perpetua: A Protest Account of Third-Century Christianity,” 2f; Shaw, “The Passion of Perpetua,” 12f.

[50] Perkins, “The ‘Passion of Perpetua’: A Narrative of Empowerment,” 838.

[51] Finley, Ancient History, 21.

[52] Clines, What Does Eve Do To Help?, 164.

Bibliography

Amat, Jacqueline, ed. Passion de Perpétue et de Félicité suivi des Actes : Introduction, Texte Critique, Traduction Commentaire et Index. Sources Chrétiennes 417. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1996.

Barnes, Timothy D. “Pre-Decian Acta Martyrum.” The Journal of Theological Studies XIX, no. 2 (1968): 509–31.

———. “Tertullian’s ‘Scorpiace.’” The Journal of Theological Studies 20, no. 1 (1969): 105–32.

Butler, Rex D. The New Prophecy and “New Visions”: Evidence of Montanism in the “Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas.” Patristic Monograph Series 18. Washington (D. C.): Catholic university of America press, 2006.

Clines, David J. A. What Does Eve Do To Help?: And Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament. Sheffield, England: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 1990.

Cotter-Lynch, Margaret. Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages: Mother, Gladiator, Saint. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2016.

DeVore, Megan. “Narrative Traditioning and Allusive Gesturing: Perpetua Reconsidered.” Ph.D., University of Wales Trinity Saint David (United Kingdom), 2015.

Dodds, Eric R. Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

Dova, Stamatia. “Lactation Cessation and the Realities of Martyrdom in The Passion of Saint Perpetua.” Illinois Classical Studies 42, no. 1 (April 1, 2017): 245–65.

Droge, Arthur J. “The Apologetic Dimensions of the Ecclesiastical History.” In Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, edited by Harold W. Attridge and Gohei Hata, 492–509. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992.

Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Farina, William. Perpetua of Carthage: Portrait of a Third-Century Martyr. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 2008.

Finley, M. I. Ancient History: Evidence and Models. New York: Viking, 1986.

Franz, Marie-Louise von. “Die Passio Perpetuae. Versuch Einer Psychologischen Deutung.” In Aion: Untersuchungen Zur Symbolgeschichte, 387–496. Zürich: Rascher, 1951.

Frend, W. H. C. “A Severan Persecution? Evidence of the « Historia Augusta ».” In Forma Futuri. Studi in Onore Del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino., edited by Michele Pellegrino, 470–80. Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1975.

Grant, Robert M. Eusebius as Church Historian. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1980.

Heffernan, Thomas J. The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Hunink, Vincent. “Did Perpetua Write Her Prison Account?” Listy Filologické / Folia Philologica 133, no. 1/2 (2010): 147–55.

Johnson, Sara R. “Third Maccabees: Historical Fictions and the Shaping of Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Period.” In Ancient Fiction. The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative, edited by Jo-Ann A. Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea, 185–97. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.

Kitzler, Petr. From Passio Perpetuae to Acta Perpetuae : Recontextualizing a Martyr Story in the Literature of the Early Church. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015.

Lander, Shira L., and Ross S. Kraemer. “Perpetua and Felicitas.” In The Early Christian World, edited by Philip F. Esler, Second., 976–95. London & New York: Routledge, 2002.

Moreau, Jacques. La Persécution du Christianisme dans L’Empire Romain. 1er Édition/3e Trimestre 1956. Paris: Presses Universitaires De France, 1956.

Muehlberger, Ellen. “Perpetual Adjustment: The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity and the Entailments of Authenticity.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 30, no. 3 (2022): 313–42.

Perkins, Judith. Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era. London & New York: Routledge, 2008.

———. “The ‘Passion of Perpetua’: A Narrative of Empowerment.” Latomus 53, no. 4 (October 1994): 837–47.

Rader, Rosemary. “The Martyrdom of Perpetua: A Protest Account of Third-Century Christianity.” In A Lost Tradition: Women Writers of the Early Church, edited by Patricia Wilson-Kastner, 1–17. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981.

Robinson, Joseph Armitage. The Passion of S. Perpetua. Facsimile Reprint. Piscataway, N.J: Gorgia Press, [1891] 2004.

Ronsse, Erin. “Rhetoric of Martyrs: Listening to Saints Perpetua and Felicitas.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14, no. 3 (September 2006): 283–327.

Shaw, Brent D. “The Passion of Perpetua.” Past and Present 139, no. 1 (1993): 3–45.

Tertullian. “De Anima.” Accessed May 26, 2025. https://www.tertullian.org/latin/de_anima.htm.

Van den Heever, Gerhard. “Novel and Mystery: Discourse, Myth, and Society.” In Ancient Fiction. The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative, edited by Jo-Ann A. Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea, 89–114. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.

Woodman, A. J. Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies. London : New York: Routledge, 2004.

2025-06-26

Speaking of Josephus . . . .

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Chapter 4 (“Problems with Josephus”) of Michael J. Alter’s book contains a comprehensive discussion (50 pages) of the arguments relating to the TF’s authenticity. He sets out arguments in helpful tabular format, discusses the contributions of John Meir, Robert A. Van Voorst, Gary Goldberg, Ken Olson, Paul Hopper and others (Allen, Carrier, Doherty, Feldman, Leidner, Licona, Paget, Price, Shulman, Viklund, Whealey…) in addition to his own analysis.

Sixteen rebuttal arguments against authenticity of the TF are presented. But the question of authenticity is shown to be only one of the “problems with Josephus” regarding the historical Jesus.

That’s chapter 4 — here is the TOC for the rest of Volume 1:

1 Habermas and Licona’s First Minimal Fact: Jesus Died by Crucifixion—An Overview
2 Jesus Was Not Brain-Dead While On the Cross
3 Problems with the Gospels and Acts
4 Problems with Josephus
5 Problems with Mara bar Serapion
6 Problems with Tacitus
7 Additional Problems with the Gospels
8 Problems with the Gospel of John and Jesus’ Crucifixion 1
9 The Shroud of Turin
10 Medical Issues Continued
11 Islamic Theology and Jesus’ CrucifixionDid Jesus Die on the Cross?
12 Is Joseph of Arimathea Historical?
13 Was the Tomb Really Accessible?
14 Could the Disciples Preach an Empty Tomb in Jerusalem?
15 Why a Lack of Controversy Over the Tomb by the Public?
16 Why a Lack of Interest in the Tomb by Roman Leadership?
17 Why a Lack of Interest in the Tomb by the Jewish Authorities?
18 Was There Controversy About the Empty Tomb Among Jesus’ Followers?
19 What Were the Consequences of an Empty Tomb?
20 Three Alternative Possibilities
21 Interactions with Christian Apologists

Bruce Chilton writes the Foreword: This highly concentrated volume is only the first fruit of a series dedicated to “The Resurrection and Its Apologetics.” The care of this initial foray promises future volumes that are relentless in their argumentation, sharp in their polemics, and judicious in their selection of the evidence and the arguments presented.

Alter, Michael J. 2024. The Resurrection and Its Apologetics: Jesus’ Death and Burial, Volume One. Resource Publications.

2025-06-25

“Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Continuing from Review 2 . . .

ChatGPT’s depiction of Isaac “receiving with pleasure” the news he is to be sacrificed!

Thomas C. Schmidt asserts that Josephus portrayed the followers of Jesus in a negative light by writing that they “received truisms with pleasure” (according to Schmidt’s translation). I have demonstrated in the previous post that Schmidt’s “truisms” is a mistranslation. The correct translation can only be “true things” or “truths”. But Schmidt also argued that when Josephus added the words “with pleasure” he was conveying the idea that the disciples were being led by their worldly, carnal, physical desires. The word for “pleasure”, he argues, almost necessarily conveys a slur against the disciples.

Again, Schmidt’s argument is based on selective evidence. Though the word for “pleasure” is often used to refer to sensuous interests or wicked motivations it is also used – by Josephus as well as other ancient authors – in connection with virtues and contains not the slightest hint of anything derogatory.

The phrase ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων) in Josephus’ writings most frequently refers to overzealous or heedless actions. (Schmidt 2025, 207)

“Most frequently” is misleading. If Schmidt is referring to the exact forms of the two words that he quotes then there is only one other place in Josephus’ writings where those forms of the words appear in combination. Furthermore, it just happens that in that one other place the phrase has a distinctly, unambiguous positive flavour. In the wake of the assassination of Gaius Caligula, a Roman senator’s speech urging careful judgment, caution and wisdom and virtuous decision-making is “received with pleasure” by the other senators.

Sentius used such words, and they were received with pleasure [ἡδονῇ δεχομένων] by the senators, as well as by all of the equites who were present. (Ant. XIX.185.2)

But it is more likely that Schmidt is referring to similar phrases built upon various forms of those words (“receive” and “pleasure”) as the context required. There are eight such instances, not including the TF, in Antiquities of the Jews. The first such instance is most interesting. . . .

Abraham had just explained to his son Isaac that he was about to sacrifice him at God’s command. How did Isaac “receive” these words? He “received” them with “pleasure”!

But Isaac—since he had such a father, it was necessary for his disposition to be noble—received the words with pleasure [δέχεται πρὸς ἡδονὴν τοὺς λόγους], and . . . declared it just, if both God and his father intended it. (Ant. I.232.2 = AJ 1.13.4)

No matter how often Josephus elsewhere spoke of wicked or foolish audiences receiving corrupt words that titillated their own pleasurable feelings, there is absolutely no way that anyone can read Josephus’s account of Isaac and think Josephus was implying some negative innuendo towards Isaac’s response to Abraham’s words.

Josephus boasted that the Judean nation observed their holy laws “with pleasure” throughout their entire lives:

What form of government then can be more holy than this? what more worthy kind of worship can be paid to God than we pay, where the entire body of the people are prepared for religion, where an extraordinary degree of care is required in the priests, and where the whole polity is so ordered as if it were a certain religious solemnity? For what things foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to observe for a few days’ time, and call them Mysteries and Sacred Ceremonies, we observe with great pleasure [= ταῦτα μεθ᾽ ἡδονῆς] and an unshaken resolution during our whole lives. (Against Apion, 2.189 Whiston’s translation adds “great” to capture the tone of Josephus’s words here.)

Schmidt acknowledges one positive instance of a combination of those words. The Pharisees who protested against Pilate are said to have been willing to “receive” death “with pleasure” rather than break the Laws of God.

But those who had thrown themselves face down and bared their throats said they would rather receive death with pleasure [ἡδονῇ δέξασθαι] than dare to transgress the wisdom of the laws. (Ant. XVIII.59.2)

Schmidt directs readers to Olson’s chapter:

For an overview of positive usages of ἡδονή in both Josephus and Eusebius, see Olson, ‘A Eusebian Reading’, 104–5. (Schmidt 2025, 78. See also Olson 2013)

So when Schmidt writes . . .

The phrase ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων) in Josephus’ writings most frequently refers to overzealous or heedless actions. (Schmidt 2025, 207)

. . . his words have no more relevance to the TF than they do to what Josephus meant by his discussion of Isaac “receiving with pleasure” the words of his father or the Pharisees “receiving with pleasure” death rather than disobedience to God.

There remains one passage in Antiquities that surely must ring with a certain familiarity among those aware of the TF: Josephus’s account of a certain Alexander who claimed to be the son of King Herod after Herod’s death. Schmidt writes:

In fact, in another passage, much underappreciated by scholars, Josephus uses the very same wording to describe how a certain imposter pretended to be Alexander, the son of Herod, and ‘convinced as many of the Jews that came to meet him to believe [that he was Alexander]’ (Ἰουδαίων ὁπόσοις εἰς ὁμιλίαν ἀφίκετο ἐπηγάγετο εἰς πίστιν), Josephus then says that ‘the cause [of this] was that men received [his] words with pleasure’ (αἴτιον δὲ ἦν τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ ἡδονῇ δεχόμενον τοὺς λόγους). Taken together, Josephus claims that the false Alexander ‘convinced’ or even ‘led astray’ (ἐπηγάγετο) certain men (ἀνθρώπων) because they ‘received’ (δεχόμενον) his words ‘with pleasure’ (ἡδονῇ). Hence, this ‘pleasure’, which the men had in ‘receiving’ the words of the pretender, seems therefore to indicate an overeager, overzealous, or all too credulous belief—not something particularly positive.

Most striking, however, is that the above passage closely parallels the TF which also describes Jesus ‘leading’ or ‘misleading’ (ἐπηγάγετο) ‘men who receive truisms with pleasure’ (ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡδονῇ τἀληθῆ δεχομένων). Such a close linguistic correspondence inescapably points toward Josephus as the responsible party for at least this portion of the TF . . . (Schmidt 2025, 82 – my highlighting)

On the contrary, what it points to is that anyone familiar with the writings of Josephus could have had such a passage in mind as they were drafting the TF. How often does the same writer describe two entirely separate and dissimilar episodes with the same semantic structures. I suspect that sort of parallel is normally what we find among ancient authors who were imitating others. But that’s an analysis project for another time.

In preparation for this post I compiled a list of extracts from both Perseus and TLG that itemize the instances where the words for “pleasure” and “receive” are found throughout all of the writing by Josephus, along with all writings including some form of the word for “pleasure” and “receive” from Josephus and his near contemporaries: Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus and Plutarch. I have decided not to belabor the point by posting them all here. If what I have written above does not suffice to convince anyone, I ask them to contact me directly and I may reconsider my decision.

Conclusion: There is absolutely no innuendo in the TF to suggest that “receiving with pleasure” the “true things” from Jesus in any way at all hinted at something negative. The words of the TF are quite capable of, and even demand, being read as positives: the true things Jesus the teacher taught were received with pleasure/happiness/joy by those who listened to him.

Bibliography

Olson, Ken. 2013. “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum.” In Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations, edited by Aaron Johnson and Jeremy Schott, 97–114. Washington, D.C: Center for Hellenic Studies. https://www.academia.edu/4062154/Olson_A_Eusebian_Reading_of_the_Testimonium_Flavianum_2013

Schmidt, T. C. 2025. Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Continues with Part 4 . . .

“Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 4 – ‘he led astray many’?

2025-06-23

“Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Continuing from Review 1 . . .

Who am I to discuss the meaning of an ancient Greek word? This is something new for me so I must justify this foray. Up until this year I only had a self-taught level of understanding of koine Greek (the Greek of the New Testament) and would never have had the confidence to address Schmidt’s argument publicly. But this year I have undertaken formal studies at Macquarie University in ancient Greek (Attic). I have been awarded 95%, 96% and most recently 99% in the grammar and translation tests to date. The course covered so far has informed us of the meanings and forms of the word Schmidt claims means “truisms” – along with pointing us to the multiple online tools to assist us with its many occurrences by ancient authors, including Josephus.

Thomas Schmidt attempts to argue that Josephus used a belittling word to describe the teaching of Jesus that attracted his disciples. At best, Schmidt claims, the word he uses is ambiguous, but that the weight of evidence should lead us to read Josephus as depicting the followers of Jesus loving trite banalities. I demonstrate in this post that Schmidt is simply flat wrong. The word Josephus uses cannot be translated the way Schmidt claims.

Josephus’s words about Jesus, the Testimonium Flavianum (TF), begin thus:

And in this time there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher of men who receive truisms with pleasure. . . . (Schmidt’s translation, p. 6 – my highlighting in all quotations)

Truisms?

A truism is “a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting”, “a self-evident, obvious truth”, “a statement that is so obviously true that it is almost not worth saying”, “a statement that is generally accepted as obviously true and is repeated so often that it has become boring”, “a statement the truth of which is obvious or well known; commonplace”. All those meanings come up with a general internet search.

And that is indeed what Thomas Schmidt believes Josephus most likely means to convey to his readers. He explains:

The term τἀληθῆ in the TF should . . . be taken to be fairly general or run-of-the-mill truths, as with the English terms ‘facts at hand’, ‘maxims’, ‘pithy sayings’, or especially ‘truisms’. (Schmidt 2025, 78)

The term ‘truisms’ (τἀληθῆ) . . . suggests basic, run-of-the-mill facts, observations, and the like. (Schmidt 2025, 207)

Here are some examples of truisms:

“It is what it is.”	“Money doesn’t buy happiness.”	“You win some, you lose some.”
“Life isn’t fair.”	“Prevention is better than cure.”	“What goes up must come down.”
“No one is perfect.”	“Actions speak louder than words.”	“Actions speak louder than words.”
“People change.”	“Success doesn’t happen overnight.”	“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
“Hard work pays off.”	“Practice makes perfect.”	“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
“Patience is a virtue.”	“You can’t win them all!”	“Time heals all wounds.”
“We all make mistakes.”	“You reap what you sow.”	“You can’t please everyone.”

It is almost the definition of a truism that it is a saying that cannot be received “with pleasure”. A truism may offer some small consolation, or a mild laugh, but hardly “pleasure”.

Schmidt argues that the word for “pleasure” in association with what he translates as “truisms” casts a negative connotation. I will reserve my response to that particular argument for another time. Meanwhile, anyone who has any acquaintance at all with ancient moralistic or philosophical writings knows full well that taking joy, delight, even pleasure, in “good things” is noble and right; what is deemed a negative is when pleasure is taken in “less than good” things. Schmidt does point out that some later Christian copyists seemed to be uncomfortable with Josephus using the word “pleasure”, but that is a problem for much later Christian ethical viewpoints.

To be fair, Schmidt does in one place acknowledge that his word for truisms is “ambiguous” (p. 31) and that it could be read as a positive content of what he taught. But his main stress is on insisting that it refers to something negative and poor in content.

Schmidt’s attempt to persuade readers that this particular word means “run of the mill”, “prosaic” bromides is misguided. The word means “truths” or “true things” or “true matters” and such.

There is no ambiguity with the TF’s use of this word. There is no reason at all to think Josephus was being sarcastic or in any way hinting that the teachings of Jesus were shallow trivialities.

talēthē — τἀληθῆ — true things or truisms?

The word Schmidt translates as “truisms” is τἀληθῆ. This is actually a contraction of two words: τά and ἀληθῆ. (The technical term for this kind of combination word form is “crasis”.) τά most simply means “the”: it is the plural neuter form of “the”; ἀληθῆ is normally an adjective meaning “true” (as in true facts, true statements, or indicating the truth of a matter). When the two words come together ἀληθῆ becomes as much a noun as an adjective. The two together mean “the truth”, “truths” or “true things”. (Luschnig and Mitchell 2007, 42, 51, 52, 78, 121, 286)

Some text books introduce the word with quotations from the fourth century BC Greek dramatist, Menander:

It is the sign of a free man that he speaks the truth.

ἐλευθέρου γάρ ἐστι τἀληθῆ λέγειν. (Luschnig and Mitchell 2007, 131)

‘Tis always best to tell the truth. At every crisis I recommend this as a chief contribution to security in life.

ἀεὶ κράτιστόν ἐστι τἀληθῆ λέγειν. ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ τοῦτ᾿ ἐγὼ παρεγγυῶ· εἰς ἀσφάλειαν τῷ βίῳ πλεῖστον μέρος. (Menander 1921, 454f)

It’s the truth I’m telling you.

τἀληθῆ λέγω (Menander 1990, 291)

Οne would be hard pressed to translate τἀληθῆ as “truisms” in any of the above instances.

But what about in the time of Josephus? How was the word used in the first and early second centuries?

I will first of all list examples of how the word was used by authors from around the time of Josephus and then quote examples from Josephus himself. Like Schmidt, I limit myself to the crasis form τἀληθῆ even though other appearances of ἀληθῆ can convey the same meaning.

Dio Chrysostom, ca 40 – 115 CE

Here are translations of every instance I found where Dio Chrysostom uses τἀληθῆ. They are from Orationes. Not a single one could be translated as “truisms”. For the Greek text click on this link to the Perseus site.

Speech 3, section 13:
…at that time I risked my life for the sake of my soul, but now, when it is permitted for everyone to speak the truth, I lie, though no danger is present…

Speech 3, section 23:
…it does not receive any great favor. For what kind of favor is it thought to be, to speak the truth?

Speech 4, section 2:
…because of the greatest authority and power, so that they not only recount true things about such matters, but even exaggerate by inventing them themselves.

Speech 4, section 10:
But he flattered none of mankind, rather speaking the truth to all, and possessing not a single drachma, just as he wished.

Speech 4, section 59:
…strike with your spear into the illusion; for you will hear the truth from me alone among men, and from no one else could you learn it.

Speech 11, section 3:
…just as, I think, it is difficult to take away from those who have raised foster children the one who tells the truth—namely what someone said to them in the beginning…

Speech 11, section 4:
…you deemed Homer more trustworthy—even though he told the gravest lies about you—than me, who speaks the truth, and you believed him to be a divine and wise man…

Speech 11, section 16:
…to begin from a madman, and they are more inclined to think that those who then condemned him judged rightly that he spoke the truth rather than that he was lying.

Speech 11, section 18:
…did he say that in such a way? For the one who does not openly state the truth about the goddesses, but rather in the opposite manner so that falsehoods are more likely to be assumed…

Speech 11, section 22:
…he had no less confidence and pride in lying than in speaking the truth.

Speech 11, section 42:
…they have no need of wine, but water suffices them to drink—just so, those who wish to know the truth have no need of measures…

Speech 11, section 80:
…and Homer agrees to this: for he could not have hidden all the truth;

Speech 11, section 83:
…giving gifts to each other like friends. After this, he finally tells the truth: …

Speech 7, section 99:
…nor did they praise them as being wise and good and speaking the truth.

Speech 34, section 30:
…and as a true guardian of his own fatherland, both thinking and speaking the truth, and through whom the city is better governed and has enjoyed some good.

Speech 21, section 3:
…I shall make corrections for them, treating each part in turn, if I am believed while speaking the truth about the more important matters.

Speech 23, section 22:
…a kind of honor and power, if they are sensible. For you must listen to the truth and not take it badly, if someone, wishing to praise others…

Speech 53, section 2:
…tender and especially resembling women—how could you suppose that he speaks the truth or is fit for anything involving hunting? — Not at all.

Epictetus, ca 50 – 135 CE.

Eighteenth century depiction of Epictetus. Wikimedia

For the Greek click on this link.

Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 7
Question and answer. For what is promised in discourse? To assert what is true, to eliminate what is false, and to suspend judgment concerning what is unclear.

Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 6
Hades? All roads to it are equal. But if you wish to hear the truth: the shorter one is the one sent by the tyrant.

Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 1
Am I such a person? How so? Are you such a person as to be able to hear the truth? Would that you were!

Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 22
…what kind of enemies. And he must come back, having examined things carefully, to report the truth, not being struck dumb by fear, such that he declares enemies where there are none.

Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 23
Come, are we fulfilling their promise? Tell me the truth. But if you lie, I will tell you: …

Plutarch, ca 40 – 120 CE

Plutarch, Pompey, chapter 13
…to offer himself and stand firm even in the utmost dangers; but upon learning the truth, and perceiving that all men were welcoming and escorting Pompey…

Plutarch, Apophthegmata Laconica, chapter 69
He replied, “We are free men; but others—if they do not speak the truth—will groan.

Plutarch, De genio Socratis, section 18
I do not know,” he said, “O Caphisias; for it is necessary to speak the truth to you.

Plutarch, Adversus Colotem, section 15
…the place, namely the class of propositions, in which all true things are included; for although these exist, there is no actual thing corresponding to them…

Plutarch, De liberis educandis, section 14
And all these things—most fittingly—should accustom children to speak the truth; for lying is slavish and worthy of hatred from all mankind.

Plutarch, Cimon, chapter 2
When the general wrote to Lucullus, he bore witness to the truth, and thus the city, which was in danger, escaped judgment. . . .

We shall resume in the written Parallel Lives the deeds of the man, setting forth the truth.

I submit that not a single use of τἀληθῆ by the above contemporaries of Josephus can reasonably be translated as “truisms”. In every case “truisms” would be jarringly out of context and make a nonsense of the point being made.

Flavius Josephus, ca 37 – 100 CE

Now for the instances in the works of Josephus. Schmidt says

Τἀληθῆ is also Josephan and is used by him thirty-nine times in its crasis form, eight of which occur in the same case and number as in the TF. Of these eight, five appear in the Antiquities. (Schmidt 2025, 77)

I have not been able to find the 39 uses Schmidt reports. I suspect there has been a misunderstanding at some point there, given that the Perseus site lists 39 instances of all forms of the word (not just the crasis form that Schmidt is speaking about).

Jewish Antiquities

The Greek text is at this link.

book 3, section 74
…he wrote as one who had found the aforementioned arrangement, considering it fitting to bear witness to the truth for those who deserve it, even if it was likely to bring fame to the one being inscribed.

book 3, section 308
…to neither condemn God with falsehood nor trust those who, having been struck with astonishment, have spoken what is not true concerning the Canaanites, but rather (to trust) those who…

book 4, section 219
…not one witness, but three, or at the very least two, whose testimony will be made true by their past conduct. But let there not be testimony of women because of … immaturity, whom it is likely either for gain or out of fear not to bear true witness. But if someone who has given false testimony [= testimony that is not true = μὴ τἀληθῆ μαρτυρῆσαι] is believed, let him suffer these things, once convicted.

book 8, section 23
…Master, (grant) sound mind and good judgment, by which I may judge the people, having received what is true and just.

book 14, section 3
…but above all, historians ought to aim at accuracy, and not claim to speak the truth about things of which they themselves are ignorant, nor trust those who do.

book 18, section 63 — our passage in question
…for he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of men who receive the truth with pleasure, and he won over many Jews, and also many of the…

The Jewish War

book 1, section 16
…mouth and tongue are loosened, but when it comes to history—where it is necessary to speak the truth and to gather the facts with great effort—they are silenced… from writing about rulers. Let truth in history [same word, ῆς ἱστορίας ἀληθές, though not in crasis form] be honored among us, since among the Greeks it has been neglected.

book 1, section 594
…(over the) corpse, he asked for what reason she had thrown herself down, swearing that if she spoke the truth, he would release her from all punishment; but if she held back, he would punish her severely.

book 3, section 438
…as the truth was uncovered with time, both what happened at Jotapata…

Life of Josephus

section 262
…that they might repent and, having gone back to their homeland, report to those who had sent them the truth about the way I have conducted myself.

Schmidt’s misleading interpretation

When Schmidt writes of this particular word that . . .

it could also be understood positively as referring to an avid pursuit of certain ideals or hard and fast facts (Schmidt 2025, 137)

. . . surely he is not fairly summing up the evidence that he himself has alluded to. In every case of the above quotations, including those from Josephus, there is no question of the word “also” being understood positively. Just look at them: in every case it is understood positively as referring to “an avid pursuit of certain ideals or hard and fast facts”. There are no exceptions.

One could imagine the word well being applied to Jesus teaching about the law, about the truth of the sabbath, about the truth of prophecy, about the truth of the Pharisees and those who take up their cross and follow him.

Schmidt appeals to context:

Schmidt writes that Josephus “often used” the word for “teacher” negatively and that Josephus uses the word τἀληθῆ to refer to “fairly mundane” things. Most importantly though is that these terms do not indicate a positive estimation of Jesus, for ‘teacher’ (διδάσκαλος) is often used by Josephus negatively, ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων) is often negative, and ‘truisms’ (τἀληθῆ) is again fairly mundane in Josephus’ writings. (Schmidt 2025, 79)

Again it is quite misleading to tell readers that “Josephus ‘often used’ the word for ‘teacher’ negatively”. He has repeated the claim:

This phrase is thoroughly Josephan. Διδάσκαλος (teacher) is used sixteen other times by Josephus, often quite negatively.¹⁰¹

¹⁰¹ For further discussion on the negative aspects of διδάσκαλος in Josephus, see Bermejo-Rubio, ‘Hypothetical Vorlage’, 354. (Schmidt 2025, 76)

So I turn to Bermejo-Rubio and this is what I see:

The phrase διδάσκαλος ανθρώπων τών ηδονή τάληθη δεχόμενων seems at first sight positive. Yet, the fact that in the sixteen occurrences of διδάσκαλος in Josephus almost half of them the word has a negative meaning by referring to false teachers . . . (Bermejo-Rubio 2014, 354 – my highlighting)

So Josephus uses the word positively more often than negatively! But if Schmidt pointed that fact out it would have undermined the impression he was trying to lead readers into embracing.

Finally, Schmidt says a Christian interpolater would have used another word for “truth”:

Turning to the word ‘truths’ (τἀληθῆ), it appears at first to signal a positive meaning, but when examined in the context of Josephus’ usage pattern a more neutral implication of τἀληθῆ can be sensed. Of the thirty-nine times that Josephus makes use of the term in the crasis form, as it occurs in the TF, he never once appears to refer to some deep, sublime reality or mystical truth. Instead, in all cases he seems rather to be speaking of various ‘facts’, the ‘present situation’, ‘the way things are’ or ‘truisms’. (Schmidt 2025, 78)

If the historical Jesus was the Jesus of the Gospel of John, maybe so. There Jesus talks in “hidden mysteries” the whole time. But few critical scholars would give much credence to the historical characterization of Jesus in that Gospel. The teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Little Apocalypse, of the Last Supper, of what must be done to inherit eternal life, of the sins of the Pharisees, and so on. Even the parables are pointers to “the facts of the matter about the Kingdom of God”. All of these teachings are best described with the same word that Menander, Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Plutarch and Josephus consistently used to refer to truths that may have been hidden but that had to be sought out, truths about the future, about prophetic fulfilments, about the faith and obedience required to enter eternal life, and the message of the gospel to be preached: τἀληθῆ.

There are no grounds that I can see for imagining that the word τἀληθῆ would not be used by a Christian in a positive sense. There are certainly no grounds for translating the word in a way to suggest Josephus was expressing some negativity (or even neutrality!) towards the teaching of Jesus.

Bibliography:

Bermejo-Rubio, Fernando. 2014. “Was the Hypothetical ‘Vorlage’ of the ‘Testimonium Flavianum’ a ‘Neutral’ Text? Challenging the Common Wisdom on ‘Antiquitates Judaicae’ 18.63-64.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 45 (3): 326–65.

Luschnig, Cecelia Eaton, and Deborah Mitchell. 2007. An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach. 2nd edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Menander, of Athens. 1990. Menandri Reliquiae selectae. Oxonii : E Typographeo Clarendoniano.

Menander, of Athens, and Francis Greenleaf Allinson. 1921. Menander, the Principal Fragments, with an English Translation by Francis G. Allinson. London W. Heinemann.

Schmidt, T. C. 2025. Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Continues with Part 3 . . .

“Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”

2025-06-21

“Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” by Schmidt – Review 1 – ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Many readers by now will have heard of a new book, freely available, arguing that the first century Jewish historian Josephus really did write a passage about Jesus. The book has been discussed on public forums, blogs, youtube channels, other websites, etc. If you happen not to have heard about it, you can download the book at the publisher’s site: Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ by Thomas C. Schmidt (links to academic profile).

I may discuss core aspects of the work in a series of posts over the coming weeks or months. There is much detail to address but I’ll begin with responses to two striking curiosities in Schmidt’s argument (striking, at least, to me). TF in the following is the abbreviation for Testimonium Flavianum, the technical term scholars have given for the passage about Jesus appearing in Book 18 of Jewish Antiquities by Flavius Josephus.

Schmidt argues that Josephus intended his words about Jesus to be

neither openly negative nor openly positive, and therefore largely neutral. (Schmidt 2025, 203)

That seems straightforward so far. But what follows confuses me. Schmidt proceeds to claim that what Josephus wrote was in some sense deliberately ambiguous.

He did however insert a healthy amount of ambiguity, enough for one to draw several negative or positive inferences about Jesus. (Schmidt 2025, 203)

I don’t quite understand. If one is writing from a perspective of neutrality, neither wanting to express an explicitly hostile nor an explicitly favourable view of Jesus, then one would expect both those hostile to Jesus and those who worship him to be more or less equally disappointed in what they read. If one wants to express neutrality one avoids writing in a manner that can be used as weapons by opposing sides. Neutral expressions do not normally become weapons for hostile debate.

A neutral expression about Jesus would certainly not be a statement that could be interpreted either as outstanding praise or as sneering put-down. That would be surely most unusual. Yet that’s the kind of argument Schmidt uses, at least in part, to justify his claim that ambiguity was to some extent Josephus’s method of writing neutrally.

Look at Schmidt’s assessment of Josephus’s words in introducing Jesus:

‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’

Here’s the context (Schmidt’s translation):

And in this time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher . . . (204, my bolding)

A Sarcastic Josephus – Version 1

For Schmidt, the bolded words can reasonably be read as sarcasm:

[O]ne could always interpret the above statement as sarcastically implying that Jesus was less than human. Evidence of this is that Josephus does elsewhere enjoy using sarcastic barbs in his work. For example, in Against Apion, he sarcastically calls Apion ‘the wonderful Apion’ (ὁ δὲ θαυμαστὸς Ἀ πίων). And he does the same with Justus of Tiberias, his hated enemy, whom he names ‘the most skillful of writers’ (δεινότατε συγγραφέων). If one interprets the TF’s statement about Jesus’ humanity as sarcasm, such would then cast negative light on the previous statement that Jesus was ‘wise’ in as much as it too would become sarcastic. The statement may thus hearken back to how in the Gospels Jesus was accused of not only being in league with demons, but also of being a demon himself. (Schmidt 2025, 71f)

This is surely a blinkered rationalization. Josephus leaves readers in absolutely no doubt about his real views on Apion and Justus. When he uses flattering terms for them the sarcasm is blatantly obvious. There is no doubt about his sarcasm. Sarcasm only works when the speaker or writer gives obvious clues that they are being sarcastic – otherwise the speaker is only having a smirk to himself and hiding his attitude from his audience. I will return to this point.

But do the words “if one ought to call him a man” necessarily mean to say that Jesus could be higher than a human, like an angel or deity? No, not at all. Here we have another ambiguity. Josephus could even be suggesting that Jesus was a demon. Schmidt explains:

Further, as regards Jesus’ humanity, the TF rhetorically wonders whether ‘one ought to call [Jesus] a man’. This harmonizes with how the Gospels present first-century Jews as being conflicted over Jesus, with some . . . accusing him of not only being in league with demons, but of being a demon himself. (Schmidt 2025, 206)

Gospel Foundations

Where did this idea come from? Schmidt cites Matthew 10:25 which quotes Jesus as saying to his disciples:

If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household! (NIV – all Bible verses quoted here are from the NIV)

You were not aware that Jesus’ enemies called him a demon? Maybe that is because Matthew 10:25 is the sole witness in the New Testament that they did. If you are open to diverse scholarly opinions, you will be interested to know that some scholars have concluded that that one verse (Matthew 10:25) was invented by Matthew himself, was in none of Matthew’s sources, and was not spoken by Jesus at all:

The allusion to the Beelzebul incident is Matthew’s own invention. (Funk, Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar 1993, 171)

So the possibility that Josephus sarcastically suggesting Jesus may have been a demon rests on a single debatable verse in the Gospel of Matthew. In other words, it rests on the assumption that the Gospels are trustworthy historical accounts, at least insofar as they help us make a case for the authenticity of the TF.

But I only quoted half of Schmidt’s words above. He also acknowledged that the phrase could also be understood to suggest that Jesus was higher than a man – that is, an angel or even a deity. Here is the other possible allusion:

Further, as regards Jesus’ humanity, the TF rhetorically wonders whether ‘one ought to call [Jesus] a man’. This harmonizes with how the Gospels present first-century Jews as being conflicted over Jesus, with some speculating that he might be the Son of God or even God, and with others accusing him of . . . (Schmidt 2025, 206)

Again, you might be wondering where in the Gospels we read about some Jews speculating that Jesus might be the Son of God or God himself. Schmidt points us towards the following verses, only one of which is from a gospel:

John 20:28

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Hebrews 1:8 (citing Psalm 45)

But about the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.

Philippians 2:6 (Paul citing a Christ hymn)

Who, being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.

Few critical scholars would consider the Gospel of John a reliable historical narrative, and fewer still would consider the words of Thomas on confronting the resurrected Christ as historically reliable. Even fewer would regard them as evidence of debates among early Jews about the nature of Christ. If we are to rely on the witness of the Gospels we need to focus on the Jewish debates concerning Jesus in the Gospels such as sabbath regulations and messiahship.

Thus far we have seen how Schmidt attempts to justify specific interpretations of ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’ by anchoring them – with mixed or uncertain success – to the Gospel accounts. This is necessary for Schmidt’s larger argument. What Schmidt argues is that Josephus’s sources of information about Jesus derive from prominent Jewish political and religious persons who had been alive at the time of Jesus, some of whom even met and questioned Jesus. These Jewish leaders, Schmidt avers, knew the controversies surrounding Jesus back around the year 30 CE – that is, they knew first-hand the controversies that we read about in the Gospels. Therefore, the Gospels can be used to throw light on what we read about Jesus in the TF. By a gracefully symmetrical circular argument, Schmidt can then affirm that the TF confirms the historical accuracy of much that we read in the Gospels.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

A Sarcastic Josephus – Version 2

Schmidt is not alone in suggesting that ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’ was written with a sarcastic pen – and therefore must be considered authentic words of Josephus.

While it is unconvincing that the entire TF could be interpreted ironically or sarcastically, Vicent Cernuda makes a strong case that at least this phrase of the TF could be interpreted in such a way; see Cernuda, ‘El testimonio flaviano’, 359–65. (Schmidt 2025, 71)

Cernuda believes that Josephus was in the company of some Roman Christians when he was writing Antiquities and these Christians pressed Josephus to include something about Jesus in his historical account. Josephus did so, Cernuda suggests, with a cheeky deceit:

This gives reason to think that the prominent Roman Christians who asked Josephus to include the episode of Jesus among the events of the time of Pilate also requested that he indicate his miraculous, virginal origin; and that the shrewd Jew complied by implying it as a secondary meaning . . . .

This double meaning was absolutely necessary for the ironic development Josephus intended and which we are trying to demonstrate. Only if this double sense — both positive and negative — of σοφός is kept in view can the following clarification be properly understood: εἴ γε ἄνδρα αὐτὸν λέγειν χρή = if indeed he should be called a man. The widely held view that this phrase comes from a Christian hand, because it implies the idea of divinity, is easily answered: a disciple of Christ would not have expressed himself in so vague a manner. On the contrary, if we accept the irony or semantic duplicity of σοφὸς ἀνήρ — “an eminent man” or “a clever type” — then the ambiguity of γε [my note: γε = indeed] (as either restrictive or affirmative) fits perfectly. To the Christians pressuring Josephus, the phrase could implicitly denote the divinity of Jesus, and they might have been satisfied with the formulation, recognizing that no more could be expected from a non-believer. But to the one who cunningly crafted the circumlocution, a latent scorn emerges clearly: is someone truly a man of honor who gains fame as σοφός, when in fact he is just clever — even a rogue? The exaltation of something that is in fact being despised is one of the classic signs of irony. And Josephus must have felt a deep aversion to Jesus and his persuasive power, as we recently observed in the study of Caiaphas’s conversion. (Cernuda 1997, 360f, 363f – translation, bolding and highlighting is my own)

So Cernuda posits a different scenario for how Josephus came to write a mischievously ambiguous line. For Cernuda, Josephus’s sources for Jesus were Christians; for Schmidt, his sources were prominent elderly Jews. Both suggest that Josephus was writing ambiguously.

For Cernuda, the ambiguity was a trick: Josephus was poking fun at the Christians by pretending to write something positive while really he was being sarcastic. Schmidt, though, is more gracious:

He did however insert a healthy amount of ambiguity, enough for one to draw several negative or positive inferences about Jesus. Whether this was because Josephus hoped to curry favor with an audience divided over their estimation of Jesus, or because he himself had no certain opinion of Jesus, or because his sources differed regarding Jesus, or because he admired Jesus but did not want to reveal his true feelings, or because he simply did not care, I cannot tell. (Schmidt 2025, 203)

Imagining Scenarios

The difference between Cernuda and Schmidt underscores the fact that both scholars are arguing on the basis of creatively imagining who Josephus was talking to or what conversations he was recalling at the time of his writing. I am reminded of Richard Bauckham’s tenuous links the authors of the gospels had to eyewitnesses of Jesus. (Godfrey 2008) What we are witnessing are ad hoc scenarios to explain why we should be convinced of the hypothesis that Josephus wrote the TF. Don’t misunderstand, though. Schmidt is very thorough, comprehensive and learned. He argues a case to justify his scenario. What I have shown in this one small part of his argument is that his case does not rest on secure foundations. There is much more to address. I am just getting started. More to follow.

An Uncertain Josephus

Till then, let’s conclude with a note on Schmidt’s personal conclusion about what Josephus meant by “if indeed one ought to call him a man”. In the end, he pulls the rug out from the entire notion of any sarcasm:

Whatever the case, the TF does not present Josephus as actually calling Jesus divine anyway, but only presents this as a potential possibility—as long as one does not interpret the statement more negatively. . . .

I am inclined to think that the phrase should be interpreted straightforwardly as Josephus expressing diffidence, uncertainty, or ambiguity regarding his personal estimation of Jesus, or on the other hand, he might instead have used the phrase as a way of acknowledging that Jesus was a polarizing figure among his readers, whatever Josephus’ own opinions may have been. (Schmidt 2025, 72, 73)

Does one normally depict a polarizing figure with a question over whether that figure was more or less than human? Is the phrase really nothing more than a “personal estimation of Jesus”? Hardly – it is a question about whether or not he is human! At least the interpretation that Josephus was being sarcastic hews more honestly to the meaning of the line.

If Josephus was being sarcastic he was not being neutral. His ambiguity was hidden from his Christian readers. If he was being neutral or disinterested over a polarizing figure, and if his sources were his Jewish peers, it is odd that he should be expressing confusion over whether Jesus was an angel or a demon. At least there is no evidence in the gospels — apart from Jesus’s words in Matthew 10:25 — that any Jews claimed he was a demon, and certainly none that he was divine. The only Jews who proclaimed the divinity of Jesus were the Christians and they were the “heretics” in the eyes of the Jews. Only by reading Acts as containing genuine history could we think otherwise, at least on the part of some non-Christian Jews. Not to mention that the whole question becomes even messier if the Gospels and Acts were all composed after Josephus.

Postscript – added about 2 hours after posting the above

One more point that Thomas Schmidt advances in support of Josephus having written “if indeed one ought to call him a man” is that the innuendo of those words would be heretical for early Christians:

The TF also makes claims that disagree with early Christian belief, such as how the TF wonders if Jesus was actually human (or less than human), when early Christians viewed denying Jesus’ humanity as heretical . . .

In this one must remember that Christian authors like Origen, Eusebius, and practically all others ardently felt that Jesus was in fact human. They consequently would have viewed any denials of his humanity as heretical. Therefore, most Christians—authors and scribes—would likely not have interpolated such a statement into the TF. (Schmidt 2025, 198, 71)

Here Schmidt is in effect contradicting his earlier argument that Josephus was drawing on Jewish memories of long ago controversies about Jesus, controversies that supposedly left their traces in the Gospels. There is no hint in any of the canonical Gospels that anyone, whether Christ followers or Jewish opponents, thought Jesus might not be human.

Furthermore, we cannot avoid noticing a certain orthodoxy bias in Schmidt’s argument here. By saying that “early Christians viewed denying Jesus’ humanity as heretical” Schmidt is excluding the possibility that the doctrines that became orthodox Christianity were a later development and that many of the earliest Christians did indeed view Jesus as a human in appearance only (cf. Philippians 2:7-8).

Bibliography

Cernuda, Antonio Vicent. 1997. “El Testimonio Flaviano, Alarde De Solapada Ironía.” Estudios Bíblicos 55 (3, 4): 355–85, 479–508.

Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar. 1993. The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus: New Translation and Commentary. New York: Polebridge Press.

Godfrey, Neil. 2008. “Bauckham: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” Vridar (blog). January 23, 2007 to June 4, 2008 [=58 posts]. https://vridar.org/tag/bauckham-jesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/.

Schmidt, T. C. 2025. Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191957697.001.0001.

Continues with Part 2 . . .

“Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’

2025-05-28

With Permission of Silence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

We’ve all seen the image. . . . We now learn that she “survived” —->

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-girl-devastated-after-family-killed-israeli-strike

Meanwhile….

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-child-kidnapped-israel-recalls-soldiers-killing-father-torturing-mother

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2025-05-21

How Did We Get Here? (Part 3) Are Democracies “Vile”?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Tim Widowfield

The first eight words in the alleged quotation below by James Madison, below, are false.

Here’s what Madison said about democracy:

Democracy is the most vile form of government . . . democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. [The text in boldface is pure fiction.]

The Founders just didn’t trust the ordinary people and deliberately kept them at arm’s length, as can be seen from the way they drafted the Articles of Confederation and then the U.S. Constitution. (Arnheim 2018, p. 25)

Certain conservative authors insist these words from James Madison prove that the framers of the U.S. Constitution distrusted ordinary people and hated democracy. The above example comes from Michael Arnheim (Ph.D., ancient history) who is, according to the editors of the “for Dummies” series, “uniquely qualified to present an unbiased view of the U.S. Constitution.” (Arnheim 2018, back cover)

Uniquely qualified?

James Madison, portrait by Gilbert Stuart

Dr. Arnheim provides no citation for the Madison quote, but you can find the true part in Federalist 10. Since so many versions and editions of the Federalist Papers exist, I’ll cite paragraph numbers rather than page numbers.

Before continuing, however, please be aware that the mischief does not begin and end with the fictional denigration of democracy. Conservatives will often, as Arnheim does, neglect to define the term, knowing that modern readers will conflate the common term “representative democracy” with Madison’s “pure democracy.”

We shouldn’t discuss terms like “constitution,” “republic,” and “democracy” as if they were simple English words. In the context of government, or in this specific case — a history of the U.S. Constitution — these are terms of art. We need to know how the authors at the time defined these terms in order to deal with them honestly. Fortunately, Madison et al. often gave perfectly concise definitions of the terms at hand. On the subject of democracy, he wrote: Continue reading “How Did We Get Here? (Part 3) Are Democracies “Vile”?”

2025-05-13

Trump Is the True Face of American “Democracy”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

The mask has been cast aside; the neoliberal suavity of the Bidens and Obamas, when pulled away, shows the reality that has been at the core of American foreign policy and capitalism and propaganda all along. But its true face is hideous, so all of us who have all their lives been so enamoured and dulled by the pretence of “freedom” and “human rights” protest in horror, aching for the mask of reassuring illusion to be brought back.

Trump’s barefaced vulgarity – his outright disregard for even the most basic norms of human decency – is, in its own way, refreshing.

I much prefer it to Obama’s sleek duplicities and fake sincerity, beneath which he advanced some of the most vicious imperial designs imaginable – including the hyper-militarisation of the Israeli settler colony – far more effectively than Trump ever could.

Trump’s thuggish demeanour is, in fact, quite liberating.

I read the article that expressed much (not all) of what I have been thinking lately — and it gave me the small leg-up I needed to post again, at least for now:

Dabashi, Hamid. 2025. “Why US Liberals Refuse to Acknowledge That Trump Is a Homegrown Dictator.” Middle East Eye. May 12, 2025. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-liberals-refuse-acknowledge-trump-homegrown-dictator-why.

It says almost everything that has been hammering away at me these past few months:

Trump is too obvious, too crass, too vulgar an imperialist. Their first instinct is to disown him as an anomaly. He looks like a Latin American dictator, an African despot, an Oriental tyrant, or a Russian czar.

. . . . He cannot possibly be American. Except he is – more than any of them – representing 77,284,118 Americans just like him, who eagerly rushed to vote him into power.

This is a bizarre intellectual malady on full display in the US, where badly defeated and demoralised liberals refuse to acknowledge that Trump is a 100 percent American phenomenon.

He is a homegrown dictator with unabashed fascistic proclivities, barely able to contain his urges, and surrounded by equally 100 percent American sycophants – worse than any clown or court jester ever conjured from their Orientalist imagination.

. . . . This is all American. “Made in America.” It is not an import. They are making America great again!

. . . . If there is any context for Trump, it is the long and recent history of European fascism – from Hitler and Mussolini to Franco, and now all their heir-apparent lookalikes: Viktor Orban, Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, ad nauseam.

. . . . Much closer to Trump are Hitler, Mussolini and Franco – even closer still are the exposed fascistic roots of American so-called democracy.

Go there: go to the roots of America’s claim to democracy, and you will see fascism staring you down.

This is Trump doing exactly what he always said he would. And what he does is backed by his claim to represent the will of the American majority.

And then Hamid Dabashi comes to the raw nerve at the centre of how all this works:

But here is the heart of the paradox: this is not merely the rule of the majority, but the tyranny of the majority – a term made potently insightful by Alexis de Tocqueville in his two-volume diagnosis of the malice and maladies of American democracy, Democracy in America (1835-1840).

The more liberal Americans detest him, the more I appreciate his having exposed the true face of America – unvarnished, with the thick democratic lipstick they have plastered over their tyrannical pigs now smeared and exposed for all to see.

But such characterisations should not descend into ad hominem name-calling. Presidents and other leaders become symbolic, allegorical of the nations that elect or tolerate them.

So it is with American presidents. What do they represent? Who gave them the authority to do what they do? The majority of the electorate, of course. And that majority is the point.

Hamid Dabashi goes on to address a core malignity that Alexis de Tocqueville identified almost two centuries ago: the tyranny of the majority, “or what is perceived to be the majority”. European monarchs had the power to control the lives of their subjects but never their minds. I have written about this a number of times over the years. One book I found of special interest because it detailed the way British and American propaganda had cast its pall over Australia — see, for example, the series of posts on Alex Carey’s Taking the Risk Out of Democracy.

[Tocqueville] wrote: “In America, the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever steps beyond them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors of an auto-da-fe, but he is tormented by the slights and persecutions of daily obloquy.”

That “daily obloquy” is now called doxxing – a vicious act of intimidation perfected by genocidal Zionists against anyone who dares cross the boundaries of manufactured consent that cast Israel as God’s gift to humanity.

. . . . Propaganda organs of liberal imperialism – of the gaudiest and most dysfunctional sorts – like The New York Times, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal define the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

There may be no visible chains, but the restraints operate through moral and intellectual pressure, daring any would-be dissenter to defy them and speak out.

Tocqueville observed that American “democracy” enslaved the mind, leaving the body to feel free. European despots could only attack a person’s body, but their minds were free and they were able to rise against those despots.

What defines the American predicament is this: how is the opinion of the majority – and thus its unyielding power – manufactured and sustained?

Three ways: through general elections, periodic polling, and, above all, through dominant media outlets.

These institutions manufacture the illusion of majority opinion by demonising critical thought, and by normalising compliance, acquiescence, and subdued fatalism in the face of a cruel fate too deeply internalised to even be recognised.

That is democracy in America.

The article concludes with an editorial disclaimer: The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

They are also my views. I would add one more area not addressed, and one that has been hammering away inside me for some time now, especially since our recent observance of Anzac Day (Australia’s annual day to remember the war dead and war veterans). Why did we — Britain, Australia, the US and the rest — go to war against Germany and then Japan? Why? I had been reading of Japan’s efforts after World War 1 to persuade America, Australia, Britain and France to formalize “racial equality” through the League of Nations that was being nutted out at the time. “We” — our leaders — point blank refused Japan’s request. How was it that whole nations felt such moral outrage that they were prompted to declare war in 1939? How could whole nations be of one mind over an attack on Poland — yet those same nations not feel the slightest twinge of upset over the massacres of Palestinians today? It doesn’t make sense. What is it that has made it unthinkable that anyone among the World War 2 allied nations should question the righteousness of that “war against nazism”? What will future generations, looking back, identify “what it was really all about”?

There was one glimmer of a moment when I really believed, with a little relief and pride, that the Australian government had actually stood up to Indonesia in order to defend the East Timor from invasion. One journalist, John Pilger, at the time wrote cynically that Australian policy was being motivated by the hopes of gaining control of East Timor’s off-shore oil reserves. That was going too far, I and many others thought. Pilger is too much of a lefty, so cynical, he cannot see situations clearly — only through his ideological bias. I was disappointed in Pilger. Years later we learned that Australia had indeed been spying on East Timorese government deliberations and did indeed use their information to demand control of the off-shore oil fields. How easy it was for me and my associates to be swept up in false propaganda myth of our nation fighting for liberty of the oppressed.

(A few days ago I watched an old documentary about how German forces treated peoples they occupied in the 1940s. In response to “terrorist” partisan attacks on them, the German army would slaughter women, children, elderly in villages from where the partisans had come. I would not dare suggest anything similar is happening in the world today among our “friends and allies”, on a far larger scale and not even hidden ….., no?)

2025-05-11

Delay in Vridar blog posting…. another reason

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

This year I resumed full time studies. I am currently engaged in a preparatory year to undertake a Master of Ancient History degree — hopefully next year. It is too early to say whether I will continue with doctoral studies after that.

Studies so far have taken me away from biblical topics, but that’s been very useful. Already I have a wider grasp of different approaches and standards among classicists, a point I will be able to use in future discussions about biblical scholarship. Especially useful has been formal instruction in learning ancient Greek, especially being alerted to the various dialects and differences that sometimes arise between reading literary texts and reading inscriptions. Already so many questions I had after grasping some very basic self-taught competence have been answered.

Hopefully I will find time to post once in a while in the meantime.

2025-05-03

“That’s what it means to be a Jew” — interviewing a West Bank settler

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

I transcribed a portion from Louis Theroux’s recent documentary, The Settlers, where he is interviewing Ari, from Texas, now a West Bank settler….

After recalling previous discussions about Ari’s view of the importance of Jewish presence in “the biblical land of Israel” . . . .

Theroux: 50:22 Are you saying that you see Israel as playing a role for modelling a new kind of nationalism, is that right?

Ari: 50:30 I think all that’s happening in the world right now is leading us as a nation to open our eyes to who we are. We are the tip of the spear fighting the battles of America and defending the entire Western world, and not just the Western world – anyone who wants any semblance of liberty and freedom in their lives.

Theroux: 50:52 Nevertheless, there are millions of people up and down the area, Arabs, Muslims, who aren’t living free right now. They’re enclosed without the same rights, without national self-determination, and in many respects feeling besieged, and I just wonder, do you see that?

Ari: 51:10 I don’t have tremendous compassion for a society that has an unquenchable, genocidal, theological, blood-lust. It’s like a death cult.

Theroux: 51:23 It’s easy with a danger with that kind of characterization of Palestinians to define them as eliminationist, and hateful, and genocidal, … are those the words …?

Ari: 51:32 Yes, I use the word death cult.

. . . . that then permits you to almost create a mirror image of that . . . .

Theroux: 51:35 It’s a death cult… that that then permits you to almost create a mirror image of that, that you say, well, if they want to do that to us, then we need to do that to them.

Ari: 51:45 I think that when you’re living amongst people who have perpetually proven, not only by word, but by deed, that they want your blood spilled in the streets, that they want to murder your children, that they want to slay all of you, kill all of you in the most horrific genocidal way — That all of the polls showed after October 7, that these people who you continuosly call the Palestinian people – that I reject the very premise that they are actually a real nation for a lot of reasons, I mean….

Theroux: 2:15 But the millions of people who have nothing to do with October 7, who actually would just like to live free full lives

Ari: 52:24 If that’s really what they wanted they would have had it a long time ago. They want to wipe Israel off the map. They want every last Jew dead.

Theroux: 52:32 So what’s the answer?

Ari: 52:33 The answer is for us to declare sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, and all of the land of Israel, and Gaza, and to settle Gaza and all Judea and Samaria with Jews in the land of Israel.

Theroux: 52:50 Did the question annoy you?

Ari: 52:52 Annoy me? I hear it so often. And it feels like it’s being addressed again and again and again. Even if the entire world is pointing accusing fingers and gnashing their teeth in rage and anger, we know the righteousness and the truth of our cause, even if we stand alone. That’s what it means to be a Hebrew. That’s what it means to be a Jew. If we know the truth of our cause that’s all we need.

2025-05-02

It’s Still Hard to Post — But Let’s Support Wikipedia

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Tim Widowfield

Like Neil, I’ve found it almost impossible to write anything right now. When I try to write about something “important,” I feel unable to move. On the other hand, when I consider writing something “normal” (like a series on translating Mark, which I’ve been planning), it feels frivolous.

We are in seriously dark times. Of course, we’ve always lived in dark times; it’s just that the darkness mostly lay outside our borders, out in our colonial empire, out in the world we dominate. I’m particularly conscious of the darkness now, as I’m reading The Myth of American Idealism, a recently published book by Nathan J. Robinson and Noam Chomsky. By the way, that link will take you to Bookshop.org. Using them is a nice way to support local bookstores against the onslaught of the billionaires.

What pushed me finally to touch the keyboard again is the recent attacks on Wikipedia by the fascist Trump regime and the fanatically pro-Israel ADL. You can read details here at Law & Crime. The actual crime Wikipedia has committed is the audacity to tell some of the truth about the genocide in Gaza. It isn’t enough to have unrestricted freedom of action and the unlimited right to control the world militarily (“What we say goes!”). No, all media must also be brought to heel. Freedom of thought consists solely in correct thinking. All else must be silenced.

From the article:

Wikipedia has been criticized by people — including Trump ally and unofficial DOGE leader Elon Musk — as of late for allowing what many have perceived to be “woke” information about current events and topics to be edited in.

Reich Chancellor Musk has decided Wikipedia is unfair to Dear Leader and bad for the Fatherland, and has told his followers to stop donating to them.

Even if you have never supported Wikipedia before, please now consider that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And as our institutions continue to fail us, left and right, we need to support independent media in all its forms.

As soon as I publish this thing, I’m heading over to Wikipedia to drop some dollars.

"Thanks for your very elaborate review! I realized that I hadn’t added your blog to our blogroll. This oversight has been corrected. Looking forward to more segments."

— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
"Vridar is consistently thought-provoking, well-informed, and asking the right questions. There are intelligent, thoughtful comments and commenters regularly offering productive discussion. Books and publications are covered with a range of perspectives with attempts at fair and accurate representation of others’ arguments and content (where there are occasional and inevitable missteps on that I notice Neil making corrections and apologies where warranted, which wins points with me). Please carry on."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
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— April DeConick, – November 2007
Congratulations, Vridar, . . . I declare, Vridar, your own hard work translating Bruno Bauer will make a major difference in future studies of Bruno Bauer and the evolution of Hegel’s philosophy of religion.

-- Paul Trejo, - April 2023
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
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— John Moles, September 2011 (personal email)
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-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
"These reviews of yours are so bloody weird!"

— James Crossley, – April 2010
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

-- Enrico Tuccinardi, - October 2022
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-- Jim West, – September 2010
"Neil, this is actually rather useful. Good job."

— R. Joseph Hoffmann, – June 2014
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"I want to say here that this site is so resourceful and highly on top of the most modern scholarship in the areas discussed here. . . I know of no other site which offers a wide range of topics related to careful critical analysis of historically and scripturally related issues."

-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
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-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
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— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"Here I give an admittedly subjective short list, in random order, of useful, high level and regularly updated weblogs on the study of the Old Testament . . . ‘Vridar: Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science’ (http://vridar.org/) by Neil Godfrey"

-- Klaas Spronk, - Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXI, 3/4 (2014)
"I have found your website really valuable as an interpretive filter for Biblical scholarship, especially the origins of Christianity and historicity of Jesus issue. Your clarity of expression, fair comments and personal insights are much valued. I refer to your site frequently as yet more names and publications pop up requiring an academic critique and helpful recommendations for book purchases. So, please continue to delve deeply and share this intellectual sustenance with your grateful readers."

— Mary Booker, – February 2020 (personal email)
It is worth saying another word of appreciation here for Neil Godfrey's effort to make Bruno Bauer accessible in English.

-- Peter Kirby, - May 2023
"Neil, in my mature judgement (I am now an old man), this fine 4-part study is a brilliant reworking, an instructive restatement of Hayden White’s Metahistory (and his subsequent writings). Your critique of certain historiographic representations as imbedded in the case study of the “scientistic”, “empirical” Richard Carrier provides a solid starting point for the more honest “fictive” reading of the New Testament that you encourage. Your last paragraph is a very intelligent call to sensitive readers of these texts. I suspect a whole generation of biblical students has been educated without the insights provided by the incomparable White. Bravo!"

-- Timothy Bagley, - November 2024
"Thanks for this detailed interaction! I’ll try to offer something more substantial than 'Thank you' in response at some point, but I didn’t want to wait . . . to express appreciation for your detailed interaction with what I’ve written!"

— James McGrath, – June 2009
"Neil, for what it is worth it is obvious to me that if you had earlier in life tracked into a graduate program at one of the world’s leading research universities you would be one of the world’s formidable ones. You are doing essentially the same quality now (apart from the philology and languages) except mostly sticking to commenting on others’ work as informed comment/discussion."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"By the way, my thanks to Neil for an ongoing superb job of exposing Jim’s review for what it is: a farcical and none too effective exercise in mythicism assassination, nothing to do with rational, let alone unbiased, scholarship. I’m also happy to see even Jim giving Neil credit where credit is due."

— Earl Doherty, June 2011
"I still wonder at all the material you turn out for Vridar. The more I read your stuff (and I still do, of course), the more I realize how much we all owe you. Your voice is unique."

— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (personal email)
"Note that I do not use the term ‘amateur’ pejoratively. . . . In fact, Godfrey is extremely well read and his librarian skills have brought many important academic works to my attention."

Raphael Lataster - August 2019
This is superb work, Neil, and reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s work from a century ago. . . . .

I commend you for being the first to even TRY to translate Bruno Bauer’s brilliant Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, which is now more than 150 years old.

. . . . .Thank you for your historic effort.

-- Paul Trejo, M.A., - November 2022
Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
"For an excellent example of generally high-quality scholarship by someone who isn’t a biblical studies professor, see Neil Godfrey’s work posted on the website vridar.org."

— Tom Dykstra, – JOCABS 2015
"Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work."

— Richard Carrier, – March 2014
"I’d like to thank you for this very nice representation of what I was trying to show in the book. It’s always gratifying when a reader zeroes in on exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my argument. Thank you for this careful and engaged reading of my work – much appreciated!"

— Eva Mroczek, – June 2017
"Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re helping to spread these ideas!"

Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)

Neil Godfrey on Am I Posting or Not?: “Thanks for the thanks, Armando. There is so much more for us all to learn and understand. …. For the…” Jul 17, 01:19
Armando on Am I Posting or Not?: “Hey Neil, I’m someone that normally doesn’t comment even in normal social media. I just wanted to tank you, I…” Jul 16, 11:10
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 4 – ‘he led astray many’?: “For what it’s worth, I prefer to keep to the words of Josephus and avoid the very common modern tendency…” Jul 16, 08:00
Neil Godfrey on Why the Bible Gives Persia Such Good Press: a Hellenistic Perspective: “Perhaps so, but don’t forget that the Greeks also had some high esteem for the Persia of King Cyrus, and…” Jul 16, 07:50
Ken Scaletta on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 4 – ‘he led astray many’?: “Josephus saved his own life in the war by telling Vespasian that he was the Messiah (Josephus claimed to have…” Jul 16, 04:45
Mark on Why the Bible Gives Persia Such Good Press: a Hellenistic Perspective: “After the Maccabees revolted from the Seleucid Empire, one can imagine that the Jews, being pissed off at the Greeks,…” Jul 16, 02:05
Wayman on Fantasy and Religion: One Fundamental Difference (Or, Why God’s Word Will Never Fail): “Really thought-provoking! I loved your point about the core difference between fantasy and religion being where the message comes from,…” Jul 15, 23:40
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “Thinking about your comment here — I think it would be a mistake for me to offer an opinion on…” Jul 14, 08:28
Andrew Dabrowski on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “Yes, being able to read the LXX would be great too. If you can read that and Aristotle the NT…” Jul 13, 22:24

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Evidence for Historical Persons vs Evidence for Jesus

When Historical Persons are Overlaid with Myth

Inconsistencies and Incongruities are a Common Element among Mythical Figures

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Schmidt’s argument re ἐπηγάγετο (epēgageto)

The meaning of ἐπηγάγετο

Josephus: “somewhat” neutral? ambiguous? negative?

1. Bermejo-Rubio . . .

2. Cernuda . . .

Bibliography

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How Historians Have Engaged With Perpetua’s Account of Her Final Days in The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity

Notes

Bibliography

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talēthē — τἀληθῆ — true things or truisms?

Dio Chrysostom, ca 40 – 115 CE

Epictetus, ca 50 – 135 CE.

Plutarch, ca 40 – 120 CE

Flavius Josephus, ca 37 – 100 CE

Schmidt’s misleading interpretation

Bibliography:

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A Sarcastic Josephus – Version 1

Gospel Foundations

A Sarcastic Josephus – Version 2

Imagining Scenarios

An Uncertain Josephus

Postscript – added about 2 hours after posting the above

Bibliography

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Uniquely qualified?

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