2025-07-07

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

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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:

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:

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’?

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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.

or

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)


2025-06-26

Speaking of Josephus . . . .

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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”

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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 . . .


2025-06-23

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

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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)

Menander: Wikimedia

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 . . .


2025-06-21

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

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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 . . .


2025-02-18

Which One Came First? “Gnostic” ideas or “Orthodox” Christianity?

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by Neil Godfrey

This post is a sequel to Not Finding the First Jesus, Look for the Last. What follows assumes one has read that post.

It is the orthodox view that Jesus came in order to fulfil the Jewish Scriptures, but he did so in a manner that defied the expectation that the messiah would conquer the enemies of the Judeans. I have suggested that this view of Jesus arose in a wider context of ideas whereby a Jesus or Saviour figure  came to overthrow the works of the Old Testament creator and lawgiver god.

My view is built on Nina Livesey’s argument for Paul’s letters being produced by one of the several “Christian schools” that existed in Rome in the second century. As I pointed out in my previous post, I have found it difficult to understand how the kinds of teachings we associate with “gnosticism” — arguing that Jesus did not have a flesh and blood body, that the Jewish god was evil, that creation itself was evil — arose from what we know of our gospels and letters of Paul. But as per my previous post, I think that the relationship between those “gnostic” ideas and the ideas of orthodox Christianity makes sense if we set orthodoxy as the latecomer.

As Livesey points out, Paul’s letters, arguably critical of “Judaism”, arose at a time when Jews or Judeans were seen as having caused horrific losses to Roman military power in the Bar Kochba war of 132-135 CE and were themselves being severely punished. I would extend the time when Jews (and Jewishness) were widely abhored to the decades before when under the emperor Trajan there were widespread Judean revolts and massacres throughout the eastern part of the empire. (One might compare the widespread loathing of the “troublous” Palestinians – and Muslims – in Israel and the West today.) This was also the time when we see the emergence of “gnostic” or similar types of teachings arguing that the Jewish Scriptures testified to an ignorant (or even evil) god whose rule only promised death.

But there is an argument that “gnosticism” emerged after Christianity. This argument denies that there was any kind of Jewish gnosticism before the gospels and letters of Paul. Edwin Yamauchi pointed out…

A major difficulty in accepting a Jewish origin for Gnosticism is to account for the anti-Jewish use which most Gnostics seem to have made of these elements. The anticosmic attitude of the Gnostics contradicts the Jewish belief that God created the world and declared it good. . . .

Many scholars therefore believe that it was probably through the mediation of Christianity that these Jewish elements came to be used in such an antithetical way. (Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Evidences, 2nd ed, p. 242f)

Then a few pages later,

Gnosticism with a fully articulated theology, cosmology, anthropology, and soteriology cannot be discerned clearly until the post-Christian era. According to Wilson, were we to adopt the programmatic definition of Jonas ‘then we must probably wait for the second century’. Hengel would concur: ‘Gnosticism is first visible as a spiritual movement at the end of the first century AD at the earliest and only develops fully in the second century.’ (p. 245)

Both of these objections fall by the wayside if we place the whole game in the second century. Anti-Jewish ideas are readily understandable in a world that saw Jews as hostile to humanity “and the gods” and deserving of the bloodshed they were suffering. That is, in the times of Trajan (110s) and Hadrian (130s).

The second objection cited above expresses the point I am making: that yes, we are looking at second century developments.

It is not altogether coincidental that scholars who assume a Gnostic background for New Testament documents in some cases also adopt very late dates for these books, because late dates for these documents would make a stronger case for affinities with Gnosticism. Thus Rudolph dates Colossians to AD 80, Ephesians to the end of the first century, and both the Pastoral and the Johannine Epistles to the beginning of the second century. Koester dates the Pastorals to as late as between AD 120 and AD 160. (pp. 192f)

And why does Koester date the Pastorals to the middle of the second century? In large part because it is believed that it would have taken decades for Paul’s first century church assemblies to have evolved into the authoritarian episcopal structures that those letters indicate. But as Livesey has pointed out in her recent book, the “home gathering” situations of the letters is a rhetorical device aimed at building a sense of community among readers. They are not documenting a historical situation.

There is no independent evidence that dates any of our New Testament writings earlier than the middle of the second century. Yamauchi acknowledges that a second century date for the gospels and letters would make the possibility of a “pre-Christian” gnosticism more likely. I think the argument goes beyond mere chronological ordering of sources, though. That returns me to the point I was making in my previous post.

In coming posts I may (as much for my own benefit as anyone else’s) post notes on various teachers who appear to me to have preceded (proto-)orthodox Christianity and whose followers appear to have engaged with the new gospels and Pauline writings.


2025-02-14

Not Finding the First Jesus? Look for the Last ….

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by Neil Godfrey

Seeking, but not finding

I think I have been searching in the wrong places for the origin of the Jesus figure in our New Testament writings. Of course it would be easiest to assume that there is some truth to the gospel narratives and that there was a historical preacher by that name who was crucified and whose followers believed he rose from the dead and went to heaven. But then I would be unable to explain why the earliest uncontested and independent evidence we have for that person does not appear until a full hundred years after his time and without a hint about how that life, so rich in allusions to mythical acts and persons, came to be known. Or I could conjure up an explanation that involved ordinary (generally illiterate) persons passing on ever more imaginative “oral reports” about the person but that would be letting my imagination fly in the face of studies that tell us that’s not how fabulous tales about historical persons originate. (They are composed from the creative imaginations of the literati.)

I used to fuss fruitlessly over trying to understand what might have led to the first gospel, widely believed to have been the Gospel of Mark. I liked the idea that that gospel portrayed a Jesus who could readily be interpreted as a personification of an ideal Israel, one who died with his nation in the catastrophe of 70 CE (the destruction of the Jewish Temple by Titus along with myriads of crucifixions of Jewish victims) and rose again to establish a new “spiritual” Israel in the “church”. But that idea did not explain the kinds of Christianities (there were many types) that swelled and plopped like bubbles in a vast Mediterranean hot mud spring. Not even if we moved the gospel to a later time so that it had the Bar Kochba war (132-135 CE) in mind.

An old door reopened

An important work to be read in conjunction with Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context

Nina Livesey (re)opened a door to a room for me that maybe I should have investigated more thoroughly before. In the book I recently discussed, Livesey speaks of a multiplicity of “Christian” schools comparable with the many philosophical schools in Rome. They usually centred around a prominent teacher, attracted an inner circle of disciples while also holding open public sessions, and would not be averse to publishing both trial and final versions of tracts illustrating some point of their teachings. Livesey revives the idea that the letters attributed to an apostle named Paul were published by one such school, one led by Marcion. Marcion was also reputed to have produced “a gospel”, one that many in later antiquity and since have considered to be an early form of our Gospel of Luke.

Let’s pause there and collect our thoughts for a moment.

Marcion was not the only “Christian” teacher in Rome around the middle of the second century. Other teachers or school heads (not all in Rome) around the same period include Apelles, Basilides, Cerdo, Heracleon, Justin, Marcion, Saturninus/Satornilos, Tatian, Valentinus . . . You get the idea. There were many competing teachings. Some of them came to be dismissed as a consequence of being labelled as “gnostic”. But they were there from the beginning — at least if by “the beginning” we insist on appealing only to independently verifiable sources.

Now when Marcion published “Paul’s letters” some other schools picked them up and used them as foils through which to teach their own doctrines. Multiple interpretations and textual variants were the result. That’s how the schools worked: they would be open to engaging with each others’ teachings, either with modifications, elaborations, or outright rejections. So it is difficult from our perspective to always know what the original teachings of some of these schools were: they were capable of changing over time.

Back to the gospels. When Marcion wrote up a life of Jesus, he was using that figure of Jesus as a means of promoting his (Marcion’s) view that “Christianity” was an antithesis of the Jewish religion. Marcion’s Jesus was not even real flesh and blood but a spirit being in the appearance of flesh and blood: the antithesis even in this respect to the physical ordinances of Moses.

Schools opposing the biblical narrative

But other schools had other ideas about Jesus. More than that, they had ideas about the origins of the Jewish religion and even of humanity itself that we today would find quite bizarre. There were multiple ideas about god and creation. Many of these ideas were borrowed from Greek philosophy, some from Greek literature and myths, as well as from the Jewish Scriptures. Some said that the god who created this world was a god lower than, and ignorant of, the ultimate “Good God”; some said the serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually a benefactor of humankind and the god who punished him (according to the Book of Genesis) was the wicked god; some said that the line of Cain (depicted in Genesis as the first murderer) was the righteous genealogy; some said Jesus first appeared in the form of Adam’s third son, Seth. Indeed, Jesus held different positions among these various schools. He might be seen as one of a number of spirit beings who were “born” in the earliest moments of time. Or he was a human, fathered by Joseph, who was possessed by a spirit being called Christ. Some saw him as hating the laws of the god of Moses and promising deliverance to all whom the Jewish god had condemned.

I suspect it is impossible to ever find a way to reconcile all of these teachings. They span events from time before creation right through to the present and beyond. One thing they all seem to have in common, though: they are all opposed to the orthodox understanding we have of the Jewish Scriptures, or the Old Testament. Not all of them, as far as we are aware, include a place for Jesus. But of those that do, Jesus has a role that is opposed to the Mosaic Law and traditional Jewish Temple. (Not unreasonably, given that Jesus is derived from the name Joshua who was originally understood as the successor to Moses.)

In other words, what I am imagining here is a situation that we can with reasonable assurance place as early as the opening decades and middle of the second century — a time when a find a multiplicity of schools with various notions proposing narratives that contradicted those we read in Genesis and those of the “orthodox” interpretation of the Jewish bible more generally.

Where did those ideas come from?

An Anti-Jewish/Judean time

I am tempted to begin with the beginning of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) as proposed by Niels Peter Lemche and in some depth by Russell Gmirkin. This takes us back to the beginning of the Hellenistic era (from the time of Alexander the Great’s conquests) when Samaritans and Judeans, with the aid of Greek writings, collaborated to construct a narrative of origins that we read today in the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy or Joshua. Genesis in particular has retained hints that its authors were trying to incorporate multiple gods whom later readers would equate with Yahweh. Most scholars have seen multiple hands and schools of thought going into the final product of the Pentateuch. It is not difficult to imagine some intellects associated with the production of the first bible continuing to raise alternative ideas that were infused with Greek philosophy and myth or to imagine that some of this kind of divergent thinking continued through to the Roman era. What are surely critical turning points, however, are the calamities that befell the Jews (or Judeans) first under Vespasian and Titus (the first Jewish war of 66-70 CE), the uprisings and widespread massacres of Jews a few decades later under Trajan and then the “final solution” by 135 CE under Hadrian when the Jews were forbidden even to set foot in Jerusalem.

The bloody times coincided with the emergence of “Christian schools” in Rome. Let’s take a step beyond Nina Livesey’s specific focus on the letters of Paul appearing at this time. Let’s suggest that it is these times that witness the emergence of schools teaching the “end” of the Jewish laws. These times further witness teachings declaring the falsehood of the narrative of creation by the Jewish god, or at least teaching that this creation was evil or less than “good”. Imagine that this is the time when we see the namesake of Moses’ successor, Joshua/Jesus, promising deliverance from the judgment of that lesser god of the Jews.

If we can imagine all of that, we are, I think, confining ourselves to what the evidence in our second century sources allows.

But how does any of that explain the Christianity we recognize today?

It doesn’t. If that’s all we had, no doubt those negative teachings of Marcion, of Valentinus and others would have fallen by the wayside in time.

From antipathy to antithesis to … fulfilment

But something happened after Marcion released his story of Jesus, a Jesus who was an “antithesis” of the best that the god of the Jews could offer.

Another school, perhaps one associated with the “church father” Justin, or with Basilides in Alexandria (I don’t know and can only surmise), responded with an opposing narrative about a Jesus who was less an “antithesis” of the Jewish god than a “fulfilment” of all that the Jewish god had hoped for but had failed to achieve hitherto.

If that happened, we have a revolutionary moment. We no longer have a negative response to “the Jewish religion and scriptures”; rather, we have a way of capturing and finding new and enriched meaning in that old religion and its hoary sacred writings.

What if Jesus could be transformed from an anti-Moses or anti-Yahweh figure into a ‘higher than Moses’ figure, a fulfilment of the higher ethics of god who was henceforth to appear as a newly discovered deity, or as the old deity whose true character was only being seen clearly now for the first time — or as the “one sent to reveal” that newly understood deity?

Such a Jesus had the power to enrich and so preserve with new meaning texts that had long been revered (even among non-Jews). Allegorical reading could infuse them with new meanings. The old was discarded, yes, but it was also retained and revivified as throwing the “new” into 3D relief by its shadows: Joseph and Moses and David and Elijah (and so on) of the Old Testament prefigured the Jesus of the New — at least if read with a little imagination. A gospel could depict Jesus as a personification of an ideal Israel, healing others but suffering unjustly only to be raised up and bring all humanity to salvation. Another gospel could present Jesus as a new Moses delivering a “higher law” in the Sermon on the Mount. And so on.

I suggest that once one or some of those schools (probably in Rome but not necessarily confined to there) discovered a way to both reject and embrace with new meaning the old Mosaic order of things, they were on a winner, as we might say today.

Such a Jesus, just like the other original Jewish writings and again like the writings of “proto-Christian” (including “gnostic”) schools, drew upon the inspiration of Greek myths and philosophy to flesh out their teachings. The Jesus with us today drew upon one additional source — the Jewish Scriptures — and found as a result a longer-lasting heritage. Various “schools” may have competed for the most outstanding way to oppose and supplant the religion of the Jews who from 70 to 135 CE were suffering the calamities of Vespasian, Titus, Trajan and Hadrian. The form of Christianity that became a religion that could boast of a “higher fulfilment” and stronger appeal to literati and hoi polloi alike was the one that learned how to infuse venerable texts and the experiences of their advocates with new meaning and build on their foundation. Rejection of the Old, in way, yes, like the teachings of other schools … but with one important twist.


2025-01-30

Paul’s Letters as Products of Marcion’s School

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

by Neil Godfrey

This post is the final in my series discussing Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship.

Portrayals of Plato’s and Aristotle’s Schools (Wikimedia images)

Nina Livesey (NL) sees the letters of Paul being composed and published in a philosophical school setting in Rome in the second century CE. There were many schools of this type in Rome at this time. We are to imagine a teacher, a philosopher, who attracted student followers. The teacher-philosopher would often hold public meetings to read work they had put in writing; discussion and new ideas would follow; and a final written work then submitted to contracted sponsors who would make copies for distribution to interested persons.

It sounds strange to our ears that Christian teachings should be categorized as a “philosophy” but Christian teachers were described in the same way: teachers of certain doctrines and heads of schools. The physician Galen referred to a “school of Moses and Christ”; the “church father” Justin spoke of one such Christian teacher facing the death penalty (as some philosophers experienced because of indiscreet public pronouncements – discussed by Secord). Many such Christian teachers are found in our sources: Saturninus, Cerdo, Marcion, Tatian, Justin, Valentinus. . . The Latin word translated as “heresy” might be as well understood as a “school” (NL, further citing Vinzent).

We have evidence of mutual exchanges among these various schools. Some would denounce other teachers; others would engage in less heated debate; the surviving writings also demonstrate various means of persuasion, such as listening respectfully to challenging questions and addressing hearers as close friends or even family.

Comparing Paul with the philosopher Justin

One of these teachers or Christian philosophers was Justin, known as Justin Martyr – mid second century – who identified himself as a philosopher. Justin taught that his understanding of the prophecies in the Jewish Scriptures came from an encounter with “an old man” who inspired him to turn his back on all his previous knowledge. The pattern echoes the callings we read about in the gospels and Acts of the twelve disciples and Paul who come to understand the Scriptures through listening to Christ or his servants. NL reminds us of an article by Andrew Hofer, “The Old Man as Christ in Justin’s ‘Dialogue with Trypho'”. NL in fact refers to a host of earlier work discussing the nature and workings of these “Christian” philosophical schools (interested readers might like to follow up some of these in the insert box).

  • Dillon, John. “Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity.” In Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, edited by Simon Swain and Mark Edwards, 401–18. Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Georges, Tobias. “Justin’s School in Rome–Reflections on Early Christian ‘Schools.’” Zeitschrift Für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity 16, no. 1 (May 15, 2012): 75–87.
  • Lieu, Judith. Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  • Schott, Jeremy M. “General Introduction.” In The History of the Church: A New Translation / Eusebius of Caesarea, translated by Jeremy M. Schott. University of California Press, 2019.
  • Dillon, John. “Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity.” In Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, edited by Simon Swain and Mark Edwards, 401–18. Oxford University Press UK, 2003.
  • Eshleman, Kendra. The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Nasrallah, Laura. “Mapping the World: Justin, Tatian, Lucian, and the Second Sophistic.” The Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 3 (2005): 283–314.
  • Rubenson, Samuel. “Early Monasticism and the Concept of a ‘School.’” In Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia, edited by Lillian I. Larsen, 13–32. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
  • Secord, Jared. Christian Intellectuals and the Roman Empire: From Justin Martyr to Origen. Penn State University Press, 2020.
  • Snyder, Harlow Gregory. “‘Above the Bath of Myrtinus’: Justin Martyr’s ‘School’ in the City of Rome.” Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 3 (July 2007): 335–62.
  • Snyder, Gregory H. Christian Teachers in Second-Century Rome Schools and Students in the Ancient City. Brill, 2020.
  • Ulrich, Jörg. “What Do We Know about Justin’s ‘School’ in Rome?” Zeitschrift Für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity 16, no. 1 (May 15, 2012): 62–74.
  • Walsh, Robyn Faith. The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Wendt, Heidi. At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire. Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • Wendt, Heidi. “Marcion the Shipmaster: Unlikely Religious Experts of the Roman World?” In Marcion of Sinope as Religious Entrepreneur, 55–74. Studia Patristica., Vol. XCIX. Peeters, 2018.
  • Vinzent, M. Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. Peeters, 2014.
  • Vinzent, Markus. “Orthodoxy and Heresy: Misnomers and Misnamers.” Forum: Foundations and Facets. Third Series 10, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 91–108.
  • Watts, Edward J. City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria. University of California Press, 2006.

Such schools evidently had access to many writings such as the Jewish Scriptures and commentaries on them.

Our reading of Justin’s work, NL points out, alerts us to similar approaches and aims in Paul’s letters:

The assessment of the [Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho] as protreptic teachings redolent of a school setting allows for additional parallels with the letters. Like Justin, the Apostle Paul’s call to “Christian” teachings arrives through other­ worldly means (Gal 1:13-16). Both Justin and the Apostle Paul are seen to depart from former philosophies (Justin) or a former way of life (Apostle Paul) to embrace the new teachings (Gal 1:13-2:2; Phil 3:4-11).160 As indicated in Chapter 3, the Pauline letters contain numer­ous instances of the language of friendship and posit community members as family (“brothers”). In the letters, issues of theological import are made applicable to communities, as are community members cautioned against the influence of others.

Furthermore, like the Dialogue, Pauline letters also make extensive use of the LXX161 in support of “Christian” principles. . . Like the Dialogue, Pauline letters contain verses cited verbatim but also those that are strategically amended. This use of scripture, is an indication of their ready availability . . . and thus provides an additional indication of a school­ like setting. (NL, 235f)

The School of Marcion

NL argues that the letters attributed to Paul were most plausibly produced by the school of Marcion.

Marcion is associated with an influential school in Rome and is known as having advanced “Christian” doctrines, and as having produced and published various compositions. In addition, among the second-century school heads (writer/intellectuals) in Rome, Marcion is regarded as having a nearly exclusive interest in Paul as being the one true Apostle from among all other “Christian” apostles and figures. Marcion’s ten-letter collection of Pauline letters (the Apostolikon) is our earliest evidence of Pauline letters.

Among the “Christian” intellectuals and heads of schools in second-century Rome, Marcion is arguably the most well-known. . . . According to [Judith Lieu], Marcion may have been the first among the “Christian” school heads operating in Rome . . . It has likewise been suggested that the codex form may have derived from Marcion. Vinzent notes that “no other teacher in the history of the Church until Martin Luther received during his lifetime (and continuing after his death) a comparable literary response.” (NL 236f)

All indications are that Marcion moved to Rome shortly after the Bar Kochba war. NL cites David Balás and I’ll quote a little more from Balás than NL specifically mentions (bolded highlighting and formatting is mine):

Marcion’s doctrines are marked by a certain simplicity, not to say single- and simple-mindedness that distinguish them from the elaborate speculations of other Gnostics or the metaphysical analyses of leading philosophers. John G. Gager has recently shown, however, the similarity of some of Marcion’s arguments, as reported by Tertullian, to certain philosophical (notably Epicurean) proofs against providence.19 The difference is that, whereas for Epicure the (especially physical) evils of this world excluded divine providence (the gods dwelled unconcerned in the intermundia) and lead, according to the Skeptics, to doubt of the existence of god(s), Marcion accepted (with the Old Testament!) the existence of a Creator, but concluded from the popular-philosophical arguments that the Creator was neither omniscient nor truly good.

19 The evidence considered above indicates that Marcion was also familiar with philosophical issues of his time and that Epicurean philosophy in particular provided an argument which Marcion used to support the key element of his thought. (Gager, “Marcion and Philosophy”, p. 59)

Of course, Marcion’s opposition to matter, body, and passions was also close to contemporary philosophy (Stoic and Neo-Pythagorean). . . .

What seems constant in all the above instances was Marcion’s tendency to provide a simple solution, without much concern for either the complexities of the data or the consistency of the system, a tendency which may explain the popular success and enduring strength of Marcionism.

Besides the Gnostic and popular-philosophical sources, I believe Marcion’s “point of departure” was deeply influenced by his and his fellow Christians’ relationship to Judaism in the middle of the second century. Marcion came to Rome around 136-140 and was expelled from the Roman Church in 144. These dates coincide with the period of the bloody suppression of the great Jewish revolt in 135. R. M. Grant has argued that the disillusionment of Jewish sects with the seemingly powerless and deceptive God of the Old Testament was one of the reasons for the Gnostic reduction of Yahweh to an imperfect or even hostile deity.

Whether this is wholely or partially correct or not, Grant’s similar hypothesis concerning Marcion seems quite possible. Grant said that Marcion “…wanted to dissociate Christianity not only from apocalyptic Judaism, but also from Judaism in general.” Politically and socially, the Christians, especially hellenistic Christians with no national or cultural roots in Judaism, found at this time their association with Jewish history an embarrassing and dangerous liability. Marcion may have found a way to effect this desirable separation by using Jewish self-interpretation at several main points. For instance,

— by accepting the anti-Christian contention of some Jews that Jesus Christ was not the Messiah promised by the Old Testament, a Messiah the Jews rightly expected to be political and warlike, Marcion made a counter claim that Christ was in fact the self-revelation of a previously entirely unknown, all-good God.

— Secondly, the Jewish rejection of Christian typological or spiritual exegesis of the Old Testament, which seemed to threaten Christianity’s claims to historical legitimacy, was now seen as a liberating insight.

Finally, the shaken confidence of many Jews in the confirmed goodness, omniscience, and all-powerfulness of Yahweh (incompatible as it seemed with the historical realities of the time) was taken as an admission that the God of the Old Testament was inferior to the all-good and perfect God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Paradoxically, it was precisely by having accepted Jewish scriptures and history, at least to a large extent, in their contemporary Jewish interpretation that Marcion arrived at his radical dissociation of the [Old and New] Testaments! (Balás, 98f)

If, as has been argued, Marcion came from a proselyte Jewish family we can scarcely avoid wondering about the impact on him of the total destruction of Jerusalem to the extent of the emperor Hadrian banning Jews even from entering the city and the widespread massacres of Jews that had been carried out under both Trajan and Hadrian. Though Marcion reduced the god of the Old Testament to an inferior deity beneath the higher and more merciful Good God of Jesus and the New Testament, he nonetheless retained key Jewish foundations:

Vinzent com­ments, “Marcion’s message … built on the Jewish foundations, on the Jewish Scriptures, the messianic hope, Jewish ethics, rituals and the Jewish people.”191 That his was a “book-religion” likewise owes to Jewish influ­ence.192 (NL, 240. Note 191 = “Marcion the Jew”; 192 = Marcion and the Dating)

I’ll quote a little more from Vinzent:

Marcion did not want Christianity to disinherit the Jews and incorporate their Holy Scriptures into its own canon, but saw only one heritage, namely that given by God in his revelation to Paul. Christianity was simply incomparable to anything that the creator had made, be it the universe, its his­tory, the Law or the prophecies of Judaism. And yet, Marcion could not free himself from his Jewish and Greco-Roman roots. That Christianity would be a book-religion in its own right was one of Marcion’s Jewish ideas and objec­tives, and one that he achieved. And that Christianity would be a thoroughly Hellenized religion without being lost in this world of the creator, in the sphere of apocalyptic religious politics and prophetic cults, Marcion secured by root­ing the sayings of a faintly remembered Jewish messianic rabbi into Greco-Roman history. Jesus, who had come down from heaven as an angel-like human being under Emperor Tiberius and procurator Pontius Pilate, delivered his message through a new literary form, a combination of startling sayings and surprising deeds, through unexpected aphorisms and mind-blowing miracles, performed on Jesus’ journey towards the shame of the cross and the unbelievable resurrection. Marcion created a powerful narrative of a transcend­ent, pre-existing figure who appeared on this alien earth, in the midst of history, to liberate human beings from these physical chains of ignorance, greed, law, sin, judgement and the need for repentance, to rescue humanity through buying men back by paying the price of death on the cross, through his descent to the utmost depths of hell, in order to save all who wanted to accept this helping hand, and to let them be where and what the Risen is. In the same way that this cosmic creation was a despicable horror without end, unfolding as a tragic his­tory, in the eyes of creatures, even of the elect and chosen disciples, the Saviour was regarded as a tragic hero. The only exception was Paul, who understood because he was granted the grace of divine insight. He followed Christ and developed the good news. Marcion’s Gospel, therefore, describes this tragic history of Jesus’ life, the failure of calling and the rejection of the elect. In contrast, among those who follow Jesus are people nobody would have dared to admit, and like the paralytic, these become co-sufferers and equally co-hated with Christ.

. . . . Before Marcion was made the ‘arch-heretic’, he seems to have been the arch-theologian, ‘the founder of a religion’ and of a new cult, Chris­tianity. . . . (Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating, 134f)

Key points noted in this context by NL:

  • Marcion was a publisher
  • He published the first New Testament (a gospel similar to our Gospel of Luke and the ten letter collection of Paul)
  • He published Antitheses, apparently an explanation of his philosophical principles and commentary on his gospel, a list of oppositions between the Law and Prophets on the one hand and the gospel on the other.

Our surviving witnesses to Marcion, coming from the writings preserved by the orthodox church, opposed Marcion as “a heretic”. But in the middle of the second century there was no authoritative judgment seat from which to distinguish truth from error. It is unlikely that in his own day Marcion could be “banished as a heretic” in the sense we imagine such a process of later times. The Marcionite and “Catholic-to-be” communities surely overlapped one another, as NL notes.

Rivals of Marcion produced alternative texts, presumably revising what Marcion himself had written. See, for example, the series of posts discussing Joseph Tyson’s grounds for believing that our version of the Gospel of Luke is an anti-Marcionite revision of Marcion’s gospel.

When we read in the early Church Fathers apparent quotations from the gospels and letters we find that they very often vary in some way from the canonical versions we read in our Bibles. This is especially so in the works that are critical of Marcion’s texts. NL outlines the various theses to account for these differences:

  1. Marcion used and edited an existing copy of the Gospel of Luke (the opponents of Marcion adhered more closely to the original gospel)
  2. Catholic writers and Marcion each revised independently an early form of the Gospel of Luke
  3. Marcion edited an earlier shorter version of the Gospel of Luke and Catholic revisers expanded Marcion’s version to produce the Gospel we recognize today
  4. Noting the lack of evidence of any gospel text prior to the second century, and further suggesting that the first gospels emerged in post Bar Kochba school settings, Vinzent takes the next logical step and proposes that Marcion produced the first gospel.

Vinzent maps the production of the gospel onto what is known of the way the schools functioned. A text was composed, read publicly and discussed and argued among close associates and student followers, revised with a final version being published more generally. The gospel and letters were written in an environment of free exchange of ideas and underwent a number of revisions. In this way the variant early versions of gospels and letters can be explained.

In other words, the explanation for the absence of evidence for any gospel or epistle prior to the middle of the second century is that they did not exist prior to the time of Marcion. Opponents of Marcion claimed he “discovered” or “found” Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. If that motif sounds familiar, it may be because we have come across it in the story of King Josiah discovering the Book of Deuteronomy: see my post showing that this claim was not at all unusual when one sought to introduce a new authoritative text as if it had the authority of antiquity.

According to modern epistolary theorists, the suggestion of finding a letter is what one would expect of an editor of a pseudonymous letter collection who wanted to provide a sense of the letter’s authenticity. If, as argued, Marcion created a gospel, a new literary genre, he – with the help of those in his school – could certainly have crafted and overseen the composition of mock letters in the name of the Apostle Paul, deploying a known and popular literary genre. (NL, 248)

For Marcion, Paul was the only apostle who truly understood the gospel of the Christ who had come from the “unknown god” who was higher than the creator god of the Law and the Prophets. That Marcion published his Gospel and Letters of Paul side by side might be seen as an indicator that he saw his “New Testament” as an “antithesis” of the Law and the Prophets of the “Old Testament”. NL indicates that such factors strongly suggest that Paul’s letters were, like the gospel, originally composed by Marcion himself. If so, then it is also likely that the letters of Paul were written with a clear knowledge of the gospel narrative. They did not precede a written gospel, in other words, but were produced alongside the gospel.

The Marcionite authors were active in the years following the calamity of the Bar Kochba war. NL finds appropriate Jason BuDuhn’s observation:

Whatever the internal developments within Christianity that pre­pared the way for the creation of a New Testament . . . it is simply impossible to dismiss the coincidence in time of Hadrian’s anti-Torah campaign and Marcion’s call for the establishment of a distinct and separate Christian sacred scripture. (NL, 251, quoting BeDuhn’s The First New Testament)

Letters were a popular means of teaching new philosophies; philosophical schools in Rome were common and responsible for the publications of and readings of rival teachings; the social and psychological dislocations that resulted from the Bar Kochba war provide a plausible background to the “Jewish but not Jewish” religious ideas of Marcion; and Paul, the only apostle said to have understood the gospel of an all-loving and non-judgmental god, was Marcion’s ideal alter-ego.

NL’s argument thus removes the Pauline letters from being in many ways unique in the ancient world, as many biblical scholars have thought, and places them in a social and ideological setting that seems to make them emerge quite “naturally”.

In an appendix NL explores in depth the educational background required to compose the letters. The production of texts that were persuasive, that could be emotionally gripping, that were instructional at the same time, was the work of highly educated persons. They did not emanate from the typical wandering preacher or tent-maker as Paul is supposed to be according to Acts of the Apostles.

With thanks to Cambridge University Press for an inspection copy.

My Concluding Thoughts

I have raised a number of open questions along the way of my re-reading and writing these notes on Nina Livesey’s book, but now I’ll offer something more conclusive. I think Livesey’s explanation of the evidence we have for the earliest New Testament writings has two major advantages over many others: Occam’s Razor and Explanatory Power. One does not need to hypothesize earlier versions of the texts for which we have no evidence. What we see at the beginning — gospel and Pauline letters in the hands of Marcionites — was the beginning of the gospels and New Testament letters. The evidence likewise informs us that the first “Christian schools” and teachers arose from among migrations to Rome in the wake of the Bar Kochba war and of Hadrian’s “final solution” punitive measures against Jews and their ideological base of Jerusalem. Such timing opens up a very plausible explanation for both the form (letters) and the content (presented as a “higher antithesis” of “Judaism”) of teachings that we find among the earliest Christians.

(As has further been discussed in other posts relating to Jesus and the Rank-Raglan hero class, mythical narratives do not evolve from illiterates telling stories around campfires over a generation or two: they are born from the minds and pens of the literate. That is one more point that is consistent with NL’s proposal of a school origin of the gospel story.)


Balás, David L. “Marcion Revisited: A ‘Post-Harnack’ Perspective.” In Texts and Testaments: Critical Essays on the Bible and Early Church Fathers, edited by W. Eugene March, 95–108. Trinity University Press, 1980.

Gager, John G. “Marcion and Philosophy.” Vigiliae Christianae 26, no. 1 (March 1972): 53–59.

Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Vinzent, Markus. “Marcion the Jew.” Judaïsme Ancien – Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 159–201.

—- Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. Peeters, 2014.



2025-01-28

Pausing to Ask Questions: Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context

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

by Neil Godfrey

I concluded the last post with reference to a presumed ban on circumcision by Hadrian. I paused there in order to check the sources. The evidence for a ban on circumcision by Hadrian is hazy and Nina Livesey (NL) is careful not to be dogmatic about it. NL’s point is to find a social and political background that best explains what she sees as the hostile denunciation of circumcision and the Jewish law in the letters of Paul:

To identify too closely as a Jew was likely not politically expedient in a Roman context after Bar Kokhba and thus provides a rationale for positing the rejection of gentile identity as Jewish (with circumcision being its primary ethnic marker) and the devaluation of Jewish law.

Again, it appears likely that the Bar Kokhba revolt of the third decade of the second century – one that had significant sociopolitical ramifica­tions for Jews and Romans – best accounts for the devaluation of Jewish law and circumcision. As indicated, Justin explicitly links his evaluation of circumcision as a sign of suffering to events that ensued after the revolt. For his part, the Galatian’s [sic] author likens the condition of circumcision to a state of slavery, a social status that corresponds to a known situation of many Jews after Bar Kokhba. (NL, 228f)

Some readers might want to weigh the evidence of Justin (highlighted by NL above) against Justin also pointing out that Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day and acknowledging that some Christians did practice circumcision (see paras 46 & 47 of Justin’s Trypho). There are questions arising here, I think. After all, the epistle to the Galatians surely acknowledges that there is a significant faction that are not ashamed to boast in the Jewish law. Nor have all modern interpreters understood Paul to have been as hostile towards Jewish laws as NL indicates, although NL, we must note, explains their interpretation of Paul as the product of ecumenical pressures — that is, to undermine the grounds on which many Christians have looked down upon Judaism.

A significant shift away from the Augustinian-Lutheran perspective occurred in the period after Ha Shoah (the twentieth-century Jewish holocaust), when anti-Jewish interpretations of Pauline letters were rec­ognized as contributing to the Jewish genocide. . . . .

Like many Pauline interpreters, myself included in my own earlier work, these scholars likewise rely in large part on the letters themselves for the assessment of “Paul’s” social situation. The method is circular: The Apostle’s rhetoric is deployed to “reconstruct the rhetorical situation to which he then responds.” Their interpretations are thus weakened by a lack of crucial external evidence: they are overconfident without sufficient warrant. (NL, 224, 227 – my highlighting in all quotations)

Perhaps so. Yet might not some suggest that NL is tendentiously interpreting Paul’s letters to make them fit a post Bar Kochba war scenario in which aftermath of the way led to Jewish identity markers becoming a social embarrassment? We simply don’t have enough evidence to know what the situation was with respect to war-engendered attitudes towards circumcision (nor were Jews the only ones to observe the ritual). But whatever the reasons were, we do know Christians were divided over circumcision in the middle of the second century (see the reference to Justin above).

If we agree with Markus Vinzent’s view of Marcion’s attitude towards the Jewish religion, while accepting NL’s proposal that Marcion’s school was responsible for producing the letters of Paul, then we can well imagine an interpretation of a second century, post Bar Kochba Paul that is less damning towards the law. Vinzent has argued that Marcion considered the Christian law . . .

. . . as an alter-Judaism, not an anti-Judaism, modelled on its antithesis encompassing a strong monotheism, a Scripture-based revelation, a Messiah, a strict emphasis on ethics, food rules and regulations of relations; it was an institutional religion with rituals and an eschatological, universal hope for a “kingdom of God, with an eternal heavenly inheritance.” Interestingly, by arguing against Marcion, Tertullian turns this alter-Judaism into an anti-Judaism, taking for granted a number of elements that subconsciously he had adopted from Marcion, while changing the appearance of the Jew Marcion in a detrimental way and the essential nature of what it meant to be Christian and destructing Marcion’s antithesis. (MV, 189).

I have wondered if the “new perspective on Paul” inches our understanding of Paul a smidgen closer to the notion that Marcion viewed the Jewish law as irrelevant for those who lived in its “antithesis” in Christ.

NL is well aware of Vinzent’s work, citing it often, but evidently sees Marcion’s Paul as more hostile towards the Jewish law than Vinzent’s Marcion may have been. There is another option, too: might we not wonder if the “proto-orthodox” themselves were responsible for the more hostile passages against the Jewish law?

With thanks to Cambridge University Press for an inspection copy.

Having said all of that, I can well agree with NL that what was a genocidal war against the Jews in Palestine, a war that took a massive toll on the Romans as well as the Jews, surely led to physical and intellectual migrations of survivors and others impacted, all seeking new answers with their old world having so traumatically vanished.

I continue to be intrigued by the question raised over when the Acts of the Apostles was written. As I noted earlier, there is a view that Acts was something of an “innocent bystander” in the midst of a neighbourhood of “riotous diversity”. Or was it written as an attempt to negate the Paul of the letters? Or did Marcion seek out letters he heard had been penned by a historical Paul (Vinzent). Or do we consider further NL’s suggestion that Acts was a rejoinder to Marcion’s Gospel, with the Paul figure being invented for that purpose — and Marcion answering that biography with the letters? And how do we even interpret Paul’s letters — and how can we know what they looked like before being settled in versions safe for “orthodoxy”?

In other words, I see scope for thinking afresh many old questions raised in NL’s argument.

Next, Paul’s letters as the products of “a school”.


Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Vinzent, Markus. “Marcion the Jew.” Judaïsme Ancien – Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 159–201.



2025-01-24

Paul’s Letters as Second Century Writings — The Relevance of the Circumcision Question

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by Neil Godfrey

Modern depiction of a dying Bar Kochba; Hadrian

Nina Livesey’s [NL] fourth chapter of The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context makes the case for Paul’s letters being composed around the middle of the second century CE.

NL refers to the earlier work of the Dutch Radical Willem Christiaan van Manen [you can read the cited section on archive.org’s Encyclopedia Biblica of 1899-1903, columns 3625ff] who concluded that all of the NT Pauline letters were pseudepigraphical and composed either in the later years of the first century or early in the second. For van Manen, the event that initiated the circumstances that led to their composition was the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE. Van Manen wrote:

They are not letters originally intended for definite persons, despatched to these, and afterwards by publication made the common property of all. On the contrary, they were, from the first, books; treatises for instruction, and especially for edification, written in the form of letters in a tone of authority as from the pen of Paul and other men of note who belonged to his entourage : 1 Cor. by Paul and Sosthenes, 2 Cor. by Paul and Timothy, Gal. (at least in the exordium) by Paul and all the brethren who were with him ; so also Phil., Col. and Philem., by Paul and Timothy, 1 and 2 Thess. by Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. ‘The object is to make it appear as if these persons were still living at the time of composition of the writings, though in point of fact they belonged to an earlier generation. Their ‘epistles’ accordingly, even in the circle of their first readers, gave themselves out as voices from the past. They were from the outset intended to exert an influence in as wide a circle as possible ; more particularly, to be read aloud at the religious meetings for the edification of the church, or to serve as a standard for doctrine and morals. [col 3626 – my bolding in all quotations]

But as Hermann Detering pointed out, and as NL concurs, there is no evidence for a “school” that could have been responsible for producing the letters between 70 CE and the early decades of the second century.

While there is evidence of Pauline letters associated with Marcion’s mid-second-century school in Rome, there is no similar evidence of the letters at an earlier period nor associated with a school of “Paul.” (NL, 200)

NL goes further and stresses that there is no other literature prior to the middle of the second century expressing comparable critical attitudes towards the Jewish law. If the Pauline letters came from that period they were anomalous. All other literature that speaks of the Jewish law up to the middle of the second century viewed it positively.

  • The Hebrew Bible — the law was given as a blessing and assurance of a close bond between God and his people
  • Jubilees — the sabbath was so wonderful a blessing that it was even observed in heaven; even before Moses holy persons observed the law.
  • Dead Sea Scrolls — positive towards the law
  • The Jewish philosopher Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE) — praised the law for containing deeper allegorical meanings
  • Josephus (37 – 100 CE) — proclaimed the distinctiveness of the law in positive tones

Circumcision was likewise understood in all the canonical and extra-canonical writings most favourably. I have listed them in note form here but NL discusses them all in depth.

The change came after the Bar Kochba war that ended in 135 CE. I have written about this war several times. Two of the more detailed posts (one is a continuation of the other) are:

  1. The Bar Kochba War – Background and Hadrian’s Visit to Judea 
  2. The Simon Bar Kochba Rebellion

Continuing with NL:

“Christian” teachers and schools emerge in Rome around the mid-second century CE, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and as a consequence of it.

The Bar Kokhba revolt and events that transpired in its wake greatly affected Judaea and Rome, both socially and politically. The revolt witnesses to a massive number of Roman and Jewish deaths (described as a Jewish genocide), the destruction of the Jewish temple, and the renaming of Judaea to Aelia Capitolina (Syria Palestina). The conquest of Judaea was likewise seen as a significant Roman victory and was greatly celebrated. According to the Roman historian Cassius Dio (c. 155-235 ce), over the approximately four-year war, Romans captured fifty Jewish strongholds, destroyed 985 villages, and killed 580,000 Jews (Dio 69.12.1-14.13). After the revolt, many Jewish captives were sold as slaves. Lester Grabbe summarizes,

. . . . Judging from the comments of Dio, however, the Roman casualties were also very high, such that Hadrian in his report to the Senate dropped the customary formula “I and the legions are well.” Aelia Capitolina became a reality, and Jews were long excluded at least officially, even from entry into the city. Only in the fourth century were Jews again formally allowed access to the temple site, and then only once a year on the ninth of Ab, the traditional date of its destruction.

Werner Eck convincingly argues that Rome considered the Jewish revolt a sizable threat and its suppression a great victory. The revolt affected territories not just in and around Judaea, but also the neighboring regions of Syria and Arabia. In response to it, Rome transferred many of its military regiments along with its best generals to the region. One such general was lulius Servus, whom Hadrian had transferred from Britain to Judaea. With Britain recognized as one of the most significant military outposts of the Empire, the relocation of Servus to Judaea is an indication of the seriousness with which Rome regarded the revolt. There is likewise the suggestion that Rome may have called up as many as twelve or thirteen legions to assist in the revolt’s suppression.

Rome greatly celebrated its conquest of Judaea. In recognition of the victory, Hadrian was named imperator. With this new honorary designation, he bestowed the highest military award (ornamenta triumphalia) on three generals charged with the suppression of Jews and the destruction of Judaea. The Roman Senate likewise dedicated a monument to Hadrian in the Galilee near Tel Shalem equal in prestige and size to the Arch of Titus in Rome. Moreover, the change in name from Provincia Judaea to Provincia Syria Palestina was a unique event in Roman history. Judaea no longer existed for Rome after the Bar Kokhba revolt. Never before or after had a nation’s name been expunged as a consequence of rebellion. Eck remarks, “It is not because the Jewish population was much reduced as a result of losses suffered during the war that the name of the province was changed. … The change of name was part of the punishment inflicted on the Jews; they were punished with the loss of a name.” (NL 200ff — though not mentioned by NL, it may be of interest to note that the area of Galilee has yielded no archaeological evidence of having been involved in the Bar Kochba revolt; Galilee was also the region to which Jewish life gravitated after Hadrian’s genocidal suppression in Judea and Jerusalem.)

Another scholar who has viewed this same war as pivotal in relation to another book of the New Testament is Thomas Witulski’s research on the Book of Revelation. (Witulski further finds significance in the Jewish uprisings under Trajan that preceded the Bar Kochba war, uprisings that another scholar has argued were messianic in nature and anticipating a rebuilding of the Temple*.)

NL writes:

Events leading up to and following the Bar Kokhba revolt can be understood as influential to the development of Pauline letters. For, the Bar Kokhba period saw not only massive destruction, death, and the removal of the Jewish population from Judaea but also the call for a ban on circumcision and the destruction of Hebrew scriptures.20 Rulings against the Jewish practice of circumcision and Jewish writings redound in discussions of these themes in texts dated in and around this period. In addition, treatments of Jewish law and circumcision in biblical and non-biblical texts dated to this period reveal a dramatic downward shift in their value. Comparably dismissive and/or derogatory assessments of circumcision and Jewish law do not surface in texts dated prior to the end of the first century. Discussions of the rite of circumcision dated at or after the Bar Kokhba revolt parallel those found in Pauline letters. (NL, 202f — on footnote 20, a reference to Jason BeDuhn’s The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon, I have been unable so far to locate the source for the “destruction of Hebrew scriptures”, though I suspect it will be found in the rabbinical references in Peter Schafer’s Der Bar-Kokhba-Aufstand.)

For other in depth studies arguing for the second century relevance of the Pauline epistles, see the translations of Hermann Detering’s Staged Forgeries and Rudolf Steck’s study of Galatians. (The latter is cited by Nina Livesey.)

It is in the context of a widespread hostility to Jewish national markers (especially circumcision) most notably in the aftermath of the horrific carnage of the Bar Kochba war, that NL finds a place for the Pauline letters with their hostility towards the same Jewish law, most notably circumcision.

The assessment of Jewish law found in Galatians finds no parallels in primary sources dated up through Josephus (c. 100 CE). . . .

A rather dramatic shift in the assessment of circumcision occurs in “Christian” writings dated after Bar Kokhba. The Epistle of Barnabas (c. mid-second century CE) and Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho (c. 160 CE) roundly and at times pejoratively debase the practice of circumcision. These writings alter the signification of Abraham’s circumcision and diminish its association with the covenant. The Dialogue with Trypho, disassociates circumcision from a state of righteousness/justification, and removes its association with the covenant. These writings likewise variously interpret the practice of circumcision as inessential, or worse, as wrong/inappropriate. In addition, Justin ties circumcision to the negative social situation of Jews in the period after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and thus provides an indication of the revolt’s influence on at least a portion of his assessment of the rite.

These second-century texts reduce in value and alter in signification the circumcision of Abraham, the patriarch with whom the rite was constituted. (NL, 208, 215f)

NL is addressing a major subfield within the scholarship of the Pauline letters:

Pauline scholars have worked tirelessly in attempts to account for the devaluation of Jewish law in the Pauline corpus.” Indeed, the scholarship in this area is recognized with its own subfield, “Paul and the Law,” with various “perspectives” offered. (NL, 223)

With thanks to Cambridge University Press for an inspection copy.

Over half a dozen pages NL traces the attempts of scholars to understand Paul’s view of the circumcision question and the Jewish law. The answer, NL believes, is to be found in the controversies generated by Hadrian’s ban on the practice as part of his program to eliminate Jewish identity.

Continuing…..


Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.



2025-01-23

Paul’s Letters in Literary-Philosophical Context

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by Neil Godfrey

Seneca

Fictional or literary letters – our interest here – grew in popularity from approximately 100 BCE – 250 CE, a period marked by the presence of sophists, rhetors, and professional teachers. (NL 138)

Seneca was Nero’s tutor up to the time he became emperor. Seneca also wrote plays and letters. The letters were addressed to a certain Lucilius. Through these letters Seneca taught his principles of Stoic philosophy. It is widely understood today that Lucilius was a fictional figure, a foil that enabled Seneca to teach his philosophy in a manner that appealed to readers: the term used is “soft persuasion” — where the real audience sense they are looking in on correspondence intended for others, and thus feel that they are privy to a personal communication. Result? They listen all the more attentively to what, they believe, was not originally intended for their ears.

Letters allow for all kinds of scenarios to prompt this or that particular teaching. Personal circumstances on the side of either the sender or the receiver can be raised in a casual or direct manner with the ability to happily allow for the introduction of a new teaching on this or that.

The education undertaken prepared the literate class in a way that made them skilled at creating characters that enabled them to introduce advice that fortuitously happened to fit the right occasion. Always those to whom the letters were addressed were in some kind of cordial or friendly relationship with the author of the letters, or if they had strayed from the ideals on which the relationship had been established, were at least still amenable to being brought back to the correct path.

So when we read in the Corinthian or Thessalonian correspondence of persons who had fallen into various kinds of misbehaviour (sexual, ritual) or erroneous beliefs (the second coming), we may well be reading an author’s skilled construction of a circumstance that opened a way to introduce another particular teaching.

But not all letters managed to sustain the occasional and personal nature that many deployed. Some became more like lengthy treatises. The skills and patience of the various authors varied — as did Seneca’s style as readers can see by perusing the different letters in the collection “to Lucilius” that he arranged for publication.

I don’t recall if I earlier used the term “anxiety of fiction”, but that is the expression used by a number of scholars to characterize tell-tale indicators that the author is making an extra effort to make his or her composition look real. One obvious example is where Paul appears to have written something “in his own hand”. Of course we may assume that such details are indicators of a genuinely artless author, but we need to keep in mind that such devices were all part of the educational curricula designed to effect verisimilitude.

What makes Paul’s letters read as works “so real” to us are the same devices that were explicitly taught to the well off members of society. Again, recall my earlier post on Patricia Rosenmeyer’s book — and NL does regularly cite this work also.

There is something about “listening in” on a conversation we were not meant to hear that makes us all the more attentive to what is said. We are especially partial to an author who writes of his trials, and even of his high status, if those words were not directed specifically to us.

With thanks to Cambridge University Press for an inspection copy.

The New Testament letters of Paul are not necessarily what they seem. With awareness of the nature of Seneca’s letters that were crafted to teach Stoic philosophy more generally, but to do so were cleverly crafted to a certain “Lucilius”, we have a right to be cautious before assuming they are what a naive reading would suggest.

In the next chapter we look at chapter 4 (the final chapter, though followed by an Epilogue and an Appendix) where NL zeroes in on the case for Paul’s letters being products of the second century.


Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.



2025-01-22

The Fiction of Paul and the Church Communities

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by Neil Godfrey

Continuing reading Nina Livesey’s [NL] The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context, we now come to the question of the stark differences between the Paul of the letters against the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles. In Acts Paul is submissive to the Jerusalem authorities and sympathetic to law-keepers; in the letters Paul is dismissive of the Jerusalem authorities and expresses hostility towards those insisting on circumcision and the law. What’s going on here?

NL revisits what we know of many letter collections from antiquity. It was common practice for authors to compose letters in the names of well-known “historical or or supposedly historical figures”:

Alongside those already discussed [Cicero, Pliny, …], there also survive from antiquity sets of letters attributed to a whole series of historical or supposedly historical figures dating from between the sixth century B.C. and the second century A.D. The full list of the texts printed in Rudolf Hercher’s monumental Epistologmphi graeci of 1873 embraces the letters of Aeschines, Anacharsis, Apollonius of Tyana, Aristotle, Artaxerxes, Brutus, Chion of Heraclea, Crates, Demosthenes, Dio, Diogenes, Euripides, Heraclitus, Hippocrates, Isocrates, Periander, Phalaris, Plato, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, Socrates and the Socratics, Solon, Thales, Themistocles and Xenophon. . . .  It has been generally (and rightly) accepted that the vast majority are not what they claim to be, but instead the work of later authors impersonating these great figures of the past (hence ‘pseudepigraphic’, involving a false or lying attribution). (Trapp, 27)

For NL, the New Testament letters of Paul fall in the same category. A biography of a famous person would present a life of action, adventure, while a later author would take such a figure and present them in a more contemplative manner through letters in their name:

[P]seudonymous letter collections customarily follow on what is known of ancient figures either from the individual’s own works, or from the character’s creative biography. Whereas the biography of a figure tends to depict the character as active, the letters written in the character’s name depict the figure by contrast as not only a letter writer but as reflective. Letters extend the life of an ancient figure and take that life into new and different directions. In the Introduction, I outlined various important conceptual differences between Acts and Pauline letters, but one of the main distinctions concerns the characterization of Paul. Acts stresses Paul’s continued adherence to Jewish beliefs and practices, whereas the letters, especially Galatians, has the Apostle Paul rejecting the requirements of the Jewish law and circumcision for gentiles.

Again, rather than a historical Paul, we have instead “Christian” epistolographers who – deploying a common and contemporary genre – adopted and extended the characterization of Paul from its creation in Acts into new directions for the promotion of theological/philosophical teachings. (Livesey, 90)

So in NL’s view, Marcion drew upon the figure of Paul — who was evidently a prominent name otherwise known in some early version of Acts — to promote his version of Christian teachings. This perspective is the reverse of one I have held. I have thought of Acts as being added to a revised, anti-Marcionite version of Luke, as part of an attack on Marcionism. I have been most influenced by a study by Joseph Tyson. NL would have me reconsidering an alternative view of Shelley Matthews that Luke-Acts belongs to a world prior to the extreme split between “orthodoxy” and “gnosticism” and rather belongs to “a more variegated context of early Christian pluralism.” (Matthews) Though Earl Doherty also would not have liked moving much of our earliest evidence to the second century he would certainly have been partial to the notion of Christianity emerging from a seedbed of “riotous diversity”.

Areas of overlap between the letters and Acts listed by NL, indicators of borrowing, but not necessarily in the direction you thought:

  • Paul is presented as a Jew: Acts 21:39; 22:3; cf. Phil 3:5; 2 Cor 11:22
  • Paul changed from persecutor to a convert: Acts 9:3-19; 22:3-16; 26:12-18; cf. Gal 1:13-15, Phil 3:5-16
  • Paul addresses circumcision: Acts 15:1-35; cf. Gal 5:1-6, Rom 2:25-29, 1 Cor 7:18-19
  • Paul reports to an authoritative body of church leaders in Jerusalem: Acts 15:2-25; cf. Gal 2:1-9
  • Paul experiences prison and being bound: Acts 16:16-40; 21:27-28:30; cf. Rom 16:7; 2 Cor 11:23; Phil 1:7, 13-14, 17; Phlm 1, 9, 10, 13, 23
  • Paul suffers various adversities, including lashings: Acts 16:22-23; 2 Cor 11:23-25
  • Paul is threatened by other Jews: Acts 9:23-24; 29; 14:1-7; 20:2-3; 21:27-31; 22:22; 23:12-15; cf. 2 Cor 11:24-27).

Common characters:

  • Barnabas: Acts 13:42, 43, 46, 50; 14:1; 15:2, 22, 35; cf. 1 Cor 9:6; Gal 2:1, 9, 13
  • James: Acts 1:13; 12:2, 17; 15:13; 21:18; cf. 1 Cor 15:7; Gal 1:19; 2:9, 12
  • Peter: Acts 10:44-48; cf. Gal 2:7, 8
  • Aquila and Priscilla/Prisca: Acts 18:2, 18, 26; cf. Rom 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19

Regional name references:

  • Antioch: Acts 15:22, 23, 30, 35; 18:22; cf. Gal 2:11
  • Syria and Cilicia: Acts 15:23, 41; cf. Gal 1:21
  • Ephesus: Acts 19:1, 17, 26, 35; 20:16-17; ch 1 Cor 15:32; 16:8
  • Philippi: Acts 16:12; 20:6; cf. Phil 1:1; 1 Thess 2:2),
  • Corinth: Acts 18:1; 19:1; cf. 1 Cor 1:2, 2 Cor 1:1, 23
  • Thessalonica: Acts 17:1, 11, 13; 20:4; 27:2; cf. Phil 4:16, 1 Thess 1:1
  • Galatia: Acts 16:6; 18:23; 1 Cor 16:1; Gal 1:2
  • Rome: Acts 19:21; 23:11; 28:14; ch Rom 1:7, 15

All of the above alerts us to intertextuality (NL 109).

But are there not clear historical references in both the letters and Acts? NL examines each of them.

2 Cor 11:32-33

In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.

In context it reads like an afterthought. Being lowered down a wall or through a window is a trope known well in Scripture (Joshua’s spies, David) and other writings. Some scholars have considered the passage to be an interpolation. It functions to link Paul with scriptural (and perhaps even other) heroes. NL, after discussing what the sources inform us about Aretas, believes the author was motivated by a similar escape story of Saul/Paul in Acts.

Acts 18:12

While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews of Corinth made a united attack on Paul and brought him to the place of judgment.

NL discusses problems around the archaeological evidence for determining a date for Paul.

Acts 18:1-3

. . . Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome . . .

NL demonstrates that the sources are far from clear that Claudius ever did expel the Jews from Rome. The Roman historian Suetonius wrote of a Jewish disturbance in Rome involving a certain “Chrestus”, but Chrestus was a common Greco-Roman name and Suetonius’s account reads much like other standard anti-Jewish tropes.

NL discusses the above passages in some depth, concluding that they are consistent with what we find in other fictional narratives to lend them a touch of realism. The practice blending historical persons with fictional tales is also found in the gospels of Matthew and Mark.

In my view, the absence of independent evidence to support the historicity of the claims in the letters (and Acts) along with known practices of drawing on historical knowledge to infuse fresh life into fictions, and not forgetting the rhetorical (persuasive) impact of the touches of verisimilutude, leaves the balance of probability on the side that the letters are indeed fictions. In other words, I am siding with NL’s interpretations.

Church Communities?

NL next takes aim at the historicity of the communities assumed by scholars to have been the real recipients of the letters.

And once again I find it reassuring to see more references to books and articles I have discussed here over the years. With respect to the questionable historicity of the kinds of church communities many scholars have posited as the recipients of the letters, as well as communities as hubs of shared oral traditions about Jesus that eventually found their way into the gospels, NL refers to “The Concept of ‘Community’ and the History of Early Christianity” by Stanley Stowers. I quoted a key passage from that article here, and addressed the related view of Stowers arguing that earliest Christianity more likely resembled philosophical schools of the day than the kinds of communities as understood in much of New Testament studies. Recall also the recently quoted remark of Lord Raglan that according to the fields of anthropology and sociology mythical tales of the kind we are addressing originate among the literate classes, not from campfire tales shared among the illiterate.

Yet, as indicated in recent scholarship, group composition of ancient literature, as envisioned in that scholarship, has no ancient parallels. Astutely argued in her book, The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Robyn Walsh notes that theories that posit communities as communal authors are based on romantic understandings of Christian origins and a misapprehension that oral storytelling lies at the heart of early Christianity. (NL, 101)

As for the references to “house churches” in both Acts and the epistles, apart from the absence of independent evidence for such communities, it is worth taking note of the literary functions of the image of household communities:

There are, however, alternate interpretations for references to the home or house in ancient literature. In her Feeling Home: House and Ideology in the Attic Orators, Hilary Lehmann explains how ancient authors deployed the notion of home for its ability to elicit feelings of comfort and order. According to her, ancient authors were aware of the many positive connotations the notion of home provided and exploited them in support of their arguments. (NL, 105 – link is to the PhD thesis online)

NL cites the work of Paola Ceccarelli and others, Letters and Communities Studies in the Socio-Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography that illustrates the ways letters were used to both promote a particular ideology and build community following. What might at first glance be assumed to be the writing of an artless innocent in surviving letter collections can be shown to be the works of high literary sophistication.

NL concludes this second chapter with accounts of the various witnesses to the letters of Paul — 1 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, 2 Peter  — and the findings of scholars such as Markus Vinzent and Jason BeDuhn to demonstrate that there are good reasons for dating these other sources no earlier than the middle or later second century.

So the argument at this point is that an early form of Acts was in existence prior to Marcion, that this Acts introduced the figure of Paul to explain the spread of Christianity to non-Jews, and that Marcion produced letters in the name of that Paul.

With acknowledgment of Cambridge University Press making available an inspection copy.

If we work with this scenario, we might well accept the later claims by Church Fathers (Irenaeus, Tertullian) that Marcion did indeed revise an earlier version of the Gospel of Luke. If we accept Shelley Matthew’s view of Luke-Acts, we can imagine Marcion producing the letters of Paul to supersede the Paul of Acts. (Such a view need not preclude further anti-Marcionite additions by the “proto-orthodox” to the gospels.) These are some of the scenarios one mulls over on reading The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context. We might be advised to work with a model of a beginning of Christianity from “schools” that were more structured and organized than the loosely affiliated informal house communities we have been used to imagining.

In chapter 3 NL compares Seneca’s and Paul’s letters.


Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Stowers, Stanley. “The Concept of ‘Community’ and the History of Early Christianity.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 23, no. 3 (2011): 238–56. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006811X608377.

Trapp, Michael, ed. Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology with Translation. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.



2025-01-21

Paul’s Letters and Accounting for Paul’s Name

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by Neil Godfrey

Elymas the sorcerer is struck blind before Sergius Paulus during Paul’s visit. Painting by Raphael (Wikipedia Commons)

The second chapter of The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship (LP) by Nina Livesey (NL) challenges the general assumption among New Testament scholars that we have seven authentic letters of Paul, all written in the first century to real communities. If there is one yardstick for any historical reconstruction that I have repeated too many times to remember it is the necessity for independent confirmation of any claim we find in the sources. So it is with happy reassurance that I read NL beginning her discussion thus:

Scholarship that seeks to establish and provide facts about Paul, such as those found in Pauline biographies and chronologies, relies on the “authentic” letters themselves and thus lacks external verification. It also uncritically assumes that autobiographical statements of the inscribed letter sender (the Apostle Paul) are historically reliable. . . .

That Paul was active in the mid-first century CE is nearly undisputed within modern Pauline scholarship. Yet other than internal sources – the letters themselves and the book of Acts – evidence of Paul’s first-century activity is entirely lacking. . . . Scholarship on Pauline communities functions to reify these groups. Without credible evidence, it simply assumes their historicity, and appears to be merely filling a historical vacuum. (73 — bolded highlighting is mine in all quotations)

The letters speak of churches meeting in homes. NL suggests that these home settings rhetorically contrast with the hostile synagogue. Nor might it be merely accidental that we are given only the vaguest accounts of these communities: their exact locations and makeup are left to the readers’ imaginations.

NL attributes the strong interest in mining Paul’s letters for biographical information to the demise of the view that the Acts of the Apostles has much value as a historical source. But when we turn to studies of Greek and Latin letters outside biblical studies, we find little reassurance that the letters can yield much reliable information. NL draws upon classicist studies to inform us in depth in an appendix of the demanding education required to prepare a person to be able to write persuasively, and the gift of persuasion was very much what the curriculum was designed to achieve. Authors were taught the skill of presenting a type of character as an author and also the skill of creating imaginary audiences. With a knowledge of how literary education of the day trained pupils it becomes naive to assume that a face-value reading of an ancient letter necessarily reflects an exchange between a “true” author and recipient.

Pauline scholars have often written about the letters as if they are in effect a form of immediate and direct communication, open and honest as if the writer were in the presence of other persons and speaking directly to them. But again, that is an uninformed view. Letters like any other literary craft are never “natural”. The composer is always creating a type of persona that suits the purpose of the letter. More detail can be found online in one of the works NL references, Michael Trapp’s Greek and Latin Letters. See in particular pages 4-10, 27, 34, 37-44.   (I have already mentioned another work that helps to inform NL’s discussion – Patricia Rosenmeyer’s Ancient Epistolary Fictions.)

The latter is central to ancient rhetorical theory, which grounds ancient epistolary theory. Ancient epis­tolary theorists recommended/advised authors to stylize their letters in such a way that their “presence” was made known and felt. As trained rhet­oricians, these epistolary theorists likewise recognized a conceptual dis­tance between an author and an author’s work, understanding that the former was always in full control of the latter. Letters are no different from other ancient written forms: they are authorial products that seek to persuade. Letters cannot on their own stand in for personal presence.

Moreover, only a constructed self is present in a letter, not a “real self”. (82)

In other words, we have no prima facie reason to assume that the Paul of the letters is any more genuine than the Paul in The Acts of Paul and Thecla or in the Acts of the Apostles.

NL indeed argues that our Paul of the epistles is a fictional character.

We have no external evidence of Paul; no noncanonical or non-extracanonical sources refer to him. While to argue against Pauline authorship based on a lack of outside evidence of Paul could be construed as an argumentum e silentio – and proving or disproving his existence is not possible – his absence from contemporaneous Hebraic, Greek, and Roman sources is nonetheless telling. (83)

Why “Paul”?

The Roman name “Paulus” is . . .

also largely unattested as a cognoman (a nickname) in the ancient world. As a nomen gentilicium (family name), it belongs to noble patrician families inside Italy. (83)

At this point NL footnotes two essays by Professor of Classics Christine Shea [CS]: a 2008 Westar conference paper, “Names in Acts 2: Our Little Roman, Paul”; a cameo essay in Smith and Tyson’s Acts and Christian Beginnings, “Names in Acts”. The former paper in turn cites H. Dessau’s 1910 paper that I have translated and made available here. Shea notes:

Alternate names and name-play are standout features of Acts, as they often are in Greek, Roman and Hebrew traditional tales:

  • Stephen (=crown — the first martyr)
  • Damaris (=wife)
  • Felix (=happy)
  • Porcius Festus (=pork)
  • Theophilus (=god lover — the “ideal reader”)
  • Jesus acquires the name Christ
  • Simon is also Peter
  • Mark is either Mark or John
  • Joseph is called Barsabas and Justus
  • Joses was renamed Barnabas
  • Simeon was called Niger
  • Barnabas becomes Zeus and Paul Hermes (Acts 14)
  • Crispus is also called Sosthenes (Acts 18)
  • the false prophet Bar-Jesus is also called Elymas when he opposed Paul/Saul
  • Let’s not overlook the career of the persecutor Saul in Acts strongly echoes the Old Testament’s narrative of King Saul persecuting David – as was noted as early as the writings of Jerome and Augustine.

Name changes may be associated with a change in status such as transfer from an outgroup to an ingroup. Whatever the background, Acts certainly appears to consider names of symbolic importance.

Around 162 CE the physician Galen (who was trained not only in medicine but also in philosophy more generally) came to Rome and wrote of some of his earlier experiences. In one of them he informs us of an episode with a prominent Roman (also schooled in Aristotelian philosophy) in Asia Minor, the city prefect Sergius Paulus, except that he introduces him as Sergios te kai ho Paulos [Σέργιός τε καὶ ὁ Παῦλος — easily mistaken as speaking of “Sergius and Paul” instead of “Sergius also named Paul”]. This Sergius Paulus was amazed at Galen’s fulfilled prophecy about a friend’s course of a disease and recovery and invited Galen to meet with him. Another who also wanted to speak with Galen was one named Barabus, an uncle of the emperor. Acts 13 speaks of Sergius Paulus seeking to meet one described as “Saul also called Paul” [Σαῦλος δέ, ὁ καὶ Παῦλος] as a result of impressive news about his activity in Cyprus. CS has drawn up a chart to show how well Galen’s “cast of characters lines up with Acts 13”:

20 And unlikely to provide a translation of “Bar-Jesus” as the text apparently promises—no matter what ingenious Hebrew etymologies are proposed. What would have been the help for a Greek reader in translating a Hebrew name with a Hebrew name?

My earlier post presents a detailed case for the name of the apostle Paul (changed from Saul) being in some way “borrowed” (as an honorific) from Sergius Paulus.

CS proposes the following possibility:

12 By the way, it is by no means certain that we can place a Sergius Paulus at the court of Sergius Paulus on Cyprus in Acts. There are several inscriptions which may or may not have bearing on the historicity of Paulus’ prefecture on Cyprus: (1) IGRR 3.935=SEG 20.302 is a fragmentary imperial decree on sacrifices which appears to mention a member of the imperial family of the 1st cent. CE. For many years commentators were content to restore the lines to name Claudius the emperor and to identify the Quintus Sergius named with the Sergius Paulus of Acts. Now, however, the emperor’s name has been restored as Gaius (Caligula), and the dating no longer works. (2) IGRR 3.930 appeared to name a Paulus as prefect, but now the position has been restored as dekaprotos, an office only known since the reign of Hadrian. Thus this proconsul Paulus served on Cyprus ca. 126 CE. . . . .

14 The fifth-century uncial ms Sinai Harris App. 5 (077 in Aland) contains just Acts 13.18-29. This seems to suggest that this episode circulated separately, apart from the Cyprus episode.

Now it seems to me that all these explanations [of commentators seeking to discern history in Acts 13] suffer from a hidden agenda: the desire to find every single word of the Pauline story in Acts historically accurate and consonant with what else is known about Paul from the letters, etc. However, although we can never inarguably place the Paul of history in the court of Sergius Paulus on Cyprus, we can certainly place the text which names Paul for the first time in close conjunction with the text that mentions Sergius Paulus.12 If we stepped back a bit from a pursuit of the historical Paul and were content to propose a solution that would deal with the history of the text, I think the explanation that in fact the text is about Sergius Paulus and “Paulus” in the text refers to Sergius would have more currency.

How would such an argument go? Let’s try this: there is a tale in common circulation about a Sergius Paulus. In this tale Sergius is called “Sergios te kai ho Paulos” apparently a common formula in Greek for indicating a Roman’s gens-name (nomen gentilicium) and cognomen.  Someone, perhaps not too familiar with Greek or with Roman patricians, comes along and translates this formula as “Sergius and Paul” and thinks that there are two characters in the tale and that one of them is the letter writer. Bingo! The tale becomes associated with Paul.14 What kind of text might have generated this confusion?

The kind of text, CS suggests, is Galen’s:

Also Sergius Paulus [Sergios te kai ho Paulos], who not long after was appointed as a prefect over us, and Flavius, a consular already trained in Aristotelian philosophy, just as Paulus was, came to visit Eudemus. To them, Eudemus, recounting all that he had heard from me, said that he was grieved and affected by the prediction made regarding future developments and was observing how they would unfold.

When, around the same hour, those things also happened as had been previously predicted, Eudemus himself marveled and revealed my predictions to all those who visited him. These visitors were almost all individuals who excelled in both rank and learning in Rome.

When Boethus heard that I was highly skilled in anatomical investigation, he asked me to explain something about the voice and respiration—how they occur and through what instruments. After learning my name, he even told this to Paulus, who himself, upon becoming aware of me, asked me to explain something to him as well. He said that he was in need of an understanding of what is observed during dissections.

Similarly, Barbarus, the uncle of the emperor Lucius, who governed the region of Mesopotamia, also desired instruction from Paulus. Later, Severus, who was then holding the consulship and was also versed in Aristotelian philosophy, showed interest. (Translation from pp 611f http://archive.org/details/b29339339_0014.)

The Galen passage cannot be dated earlier than 162 CE, “but pieces of literary flotsam might attach themselves to the narrative any time until the texts are presumably frozen in the 4th century (at the earliest).” (CS 13)

Paul, before his conversion and as Saul, has long been associated with King Saul who persecuted David. More recent scholars have further discerned in that persecutor Saul allusions to King Pentheus who is the persecutor of the god Dionysus in Euripides’ play, Bacchae. Some have further identified the second part of Saul’s career, the time from his conversion, with the god Dionysus who turns the tables on Pentheus and is also well known as the conquering god. The author of Acts appears to have switched role models for his Saul-Paul character: first he is based on the persecutor of Dionysus and after his conversion he is modeled on Dionysus himself. The allusions such as these and many others come to focus on this episode in Acts 13. Though NL discusses a range of them, they are too many and detailed to include in this post.

The question that comes to my mind is this: If the author of Acts had a historical figure to draw upon then why would he or she have turned to the characters of myth and fiction as guides for how to create Paul?

Such is part of a wider ranging discussion by NL.

It seems likely that the new name “Paul” signifies the character’s first act of conversion of a prominent Roman official, whose name he then inherits. The adoption of a non-Jewish name likewise mirrors his mission to the gentiles (89 — with acknowledgement for this insight to NL’s student Caroline Perkins)

In the next post I will pick up NL’s analysis of how the various characters in Acts are echoed in the epistles.


With thanks to Cambridge University Press for an inspection copy.

Galen. Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia. Edited by Karl Gottlob Kühn. Vol. XIV. Lipsiae : C. Cnobloch, 1827. http://archive.org/details/b29339339_0014.

Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Shea, Christine R. “Names in Acts.” In Acts and Christian Beginnings: The Acts Seminar Report, edited by Dennis Edwin Smith and Joseph B. Tyson, 22–24. Polebridge Press, 2013.

Shea, Christine R. “Names in Acts 2: Our Little Roman, Paul.” In Westar Fall 2008 Conference, 7–17. Santa Rosa, CA, 2008.