John the Baptist, redivivus of a 2015 article

[Secret Alias]

I wish I saw that from you and Goranson once and a while. Let's recognize February 6th as Giuseppe day. giuseppe ha dimostrato di essere umano. At least he's human. We all make mistakes. It takes a human to admit he's made one. Congrats Giuseppe. Hai dimostrato di essere umano.

[StephenGoranson]

Giuseppe » Tue Feb 06, 2024 6:47 am
Ok, I recognize now that Origen mentioned Josephus who mentioned John the Baptist.
~~~
I also welcome this--as a possibility.

[DrSarah]

If I are correct that Origen confused the book 18 of Antiquities of Josephus with the same book written by 'Hegesippus', then what an interpolator had to do, after Origen and without having read Origen at all (but only the same Hegesippus's book read by Origen), is to place in the original Josephus the passage from the Hegesippus's book, and place it in the same position where Hegesippus (the author of the false book 18 of Antiquities) put it.

What my scenario assumes by need, then, is that a Christian forger, before Origen, wanted to pose as "Josephus"" by calling himself "Hegesippus" (really the same name), and was interested to fabricate, inter alia, precisely the book 18 of the Antiquities, given that the book 18 is the book, in the real Josephus, where the same political figures (Pilate and Herod Antipas) mentioned in the Gospels are mentioned more often according to the real Josephus, too.

This false book 18 of Antiquities by Hegesippus obliged both Origen to mention the 'book 18 of Antiquities' as coming (via confusion) from the real Josephus and, entirely independently, a later Christian interpolator to interpolate the same passage in the precise location in the real Josephus.

Okaaaay, I'm trying to figure out what you see as having been the sequence of events... This is my attempt at summarising what you believe about this:

1. A forger rewrote Ant. Book 18, including, among other things, a description of someone called JtB who used baptism for purification of sins.
2. Origen read this rewritten Book 18 rather than the real one, and mentioned this quote in 'Contra Celsus' under the belief that it was a genuine Josephus quote.
3. Later, a different person interpolated a different quote about JtB into Book 18, which is the one we have today.

Could you please a) tell me whether I've interpreted your thoughts correctly,

correct. I would add only that the forger of the point (1) is probably Hegesippus, since a microsecond after it has been proved (by Olson, Carrier and probably Kirby inter alia) that Origen quoted Hegesippus about James.

Haven’t read Olson on this, but Carrier’s argument (unless he’s changed it) is that Origen was actually citing a passage from Hegesippus the Christian writer which Origen misremembered as being by Josephus. Aside from the fact that no, this hasn’t been ‘proved’, it also isn’t anything to do with forgery.

In other terms, I argue from the premise that it is a FACT that Origen quoted Hegesippus about James.

Well, I’d disagree with you there for starters. If I remember rightly, Carrier’s argument in favour of this claim was that Origen claimed Josephus had said things about James that he did not in fact say. It’s perfectly plausible that this is because he was mentally combining Josephus’s mention of James with things that someone else had in fact written about James, but we don’t know whether this actually was the case (since it’s also possible that Origen might have simply read what he wanted to read into what Josephus actually wrote) or, if it was the case, whether the person was Hegesippus.

Given that the confusion by Origen was between Josephus and Hegesippus about James, then it is very probable that the same confusion between Josephus and Hegesippus about James was the banal continuation of the confusion by Origen between Josephus and Hegesippus about John the Baptist.

Apart from that not actually being a given (as above), there seem to be two different claims getting confused here. Carrier is claiming that Origen remembered a quote from the work Hegesippus wrote as himself but misremembered it as having been in Josephus, while you’re claiming that Origen read a fake volume claiming to be part of Josephus’s work. But you’re saying they’re the same claim, which they’re not.

and b), if so, tell me what you believe to have been the motive of both the forger in the first point and the interpolator in the third point?

in the first point: since the first forger is Hegesippus, and since Markus Vinzent finds a possible cause behind Hegesippus' legend about James in the anti-marcionite polemic, then probably also the positive description about John the Baptist reflected the same anti-marcionite polemic in action behind the legend about James the Just forged by Hegesippus.

The second forger introduced a different Baptist Passage (the passage read by us today) for unknown (i.e. only speculative) reasons.

Well, unless we can speculate a very convincing reason, I think Occam’s razor still cuts through to the much simpler explanation that the passage actually was original to Josephus and that Origen’s errors in describing it were due solely to misremembering it.

What reason do you speculate that someone might have had for going to the trouble of forging a lengthy passage, carefully constructed to be convincingly in Josephus’s style, and clearly not representing gospel-based belief either? If you have such a reason, why do you feel it to be more convincing than the simpler hypothesis that the passage was in the work in the first place and Origen either misremembered it or read into it what he wanted to read into it?

We know that this passage doesn't overcome the test of authenticity since we have already verified, thanks to Origen's quote from a different passage, the Christian interest in interpolating their own version on John the Baptist into Josephus.

Say what now? All we know is that this particular Christian was interested enough to cite a passage in the course of refuting something specific that someone else had said. A willingness to cite a passage that’s actually there doesn’t at all prove that the person is prepared to blatantly insert a passage.

Hence, the final verdict is fifty-fifty: licet to doubt about the authenticity of the current passage about John the Baptist in Josephus. But this is clearly a weak agnostic position. It doesn't share the same degree of certainty held by the claim that all the Testimonia Flaviana about Jesus are total interpolations.

…which is a very poor degree of certainty in the first place, given that the majority of scholars think that this passage stands up as partly original on analysis.

[DrSarah]

Hello! My apologies for taking so long to respond.

Hi Ken,

Thanks for this. While it's not impossible, it does sound like a very roundabout, complicated, improbable explanation for something that can surely be explained much more easily by the 'brother of Jesus called Christ' line being original to Josephus. Doesn't Occam's razor just take us to that explanation?

Specifics:

1. Note that Josephus's phrasing is 'Iacobus onoma auto', which seems like an odd sort of phrase to use if he didn't have the 'brother of Jesus called Christ' identifier. I also can't see why an interpolator would have put that in. However, if 'brother of Jesus called Christ' is original to the sentence, then it does make sense; Josephus leads by identifying James by his better-known brother, then puts in his actual name with the 'onoma auto' phrase to tell us that this was his own name.

2. Your sequence of events requires Origen to confuse two authors with very different approaches and styles. Yes, they had the same first name, but that doesn't seem like enough to cause that level of confusion. If Origen remembers reading this in a Christian apologetics work, why would he think it's from a Jewish historian who wrote almost a century earlier?

(Comparison from an event in my own life: I was once trying to find a children's book that someone on a forum remembered reading and that I did also remember, but, when I tried to remember the author's name, I kept thinking 'Bernard Cornell', which seemed unlikely as the books I'd read by him were adult historical novels and quite different. When I succeeded in looking the book up based on what I remembered of the title, I realised the author was actually Bernard *Ashley*, which made much more sense in terms of what I remembered reading of Ashley's work. So, although I'd initially confused two authors with the same first name, I did have a strong sense of 'huh, that doesn't seem right' that led me to check and get it correct, and I can't imagine just forging ahead with 'well, it's obviously Bernard Cornell just because that's the first name that came to mind'.)

3. It also requires Origen to have spontaneously come up with the phrase 'called Christ' for Jesus, which is not one that I can find him using anywhere else except when he's quoting it from Matthew, and is, for obvious theological reasons, a rare one for Christians to use anyway.

4. It requires Eusebius to have copied that same lengthy phrase into the margin, instead of, say, just making a note 'Origen', or 'brother of Christ', to remind himself.

With all of those issues on top of the general issue of this being significantly more complicated and roundabout than believing the passage to be there in the first place, I don't see why this is 'the best' explanation rather than the explanation that the 'Jesus called Christ' line is indeed original to Josephus.

Dr. Sarah,

Thanks for the reply. Those are reasonable objections and not unexpected. But let me address them serriatim.

First: No, I don't think Occam's razor takes us to the explanation that 'the brother of Jesus who was called Christ' is the original reading, but I realize many do think that.

Occam's razor (we'll skip the question of whether William Occam ever wrote the principle attributed to him) is commonly formulated as 'the simplest explanation is usually the best', but is more accurately translated 'Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity' (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). It's not the simplest explanation that is best, it's the simplest explanation that explains or takes account of the evidence that's best.

The difference between the two is apparent in several places I've already discussed, and I'll add one:

If we look at the Testimonium Flavianum in the Latin translation of the Antiquities, we might think it's a direct translation made of the Antiquities (i.e., that's the simplest theory), unless we look at the version of the Testimonium in Rufinus' translation of the Ecclesiastical History, and then the simplest explanation is that it's dependent on that.

The simplest explanation for the presence of the Testimonium Flavianum in all our manuscripts of book 18 of the Antiquities of Josephus is that Josephus wrote it, and there are scholars who think that, but for a multitude of reasons I won't try to recapitulate here, I and a large majority of scholars do not think it's the correct one.

I realise it’s a tangent, but curious as to where you got ‘large majority’ from? From all that I’ve read about the debate, it’s the other way round; while the view that the TF is entirely forged is certainly seen as a legitimate opinion in scholarship, it’s still the minority opinion, with the majority holding to partial authenticity. (Unless you mean the TF in its current form and are talking about the clearly forged lines and not the disputed parts.)

The simplest explanation for why Eusebius says Josephus wrote that 'these things' happened to avenge the brother of Jesus Christ etc. in HE 2.23.20 would be that he really did find that in his manuscript of Josephus, and there are a very few scholars, such as Sabrina Inowlocki, that have argued for that, but the more common view is that Eusebius is repeating what Origen said.

Don’t think this holds up as an analogy, though. The idea that Eusebius is repeating what Origen said does introduce another step but is still a basically simple idea that only requires us to speculate that something that we know frequently happened/still happens (namely, that scholars use secondary sources) happened in this particular case. The claims about the JtB passage being forged are orders of magnitude more complicated in the speculation they require.

As far as I know, all the manuscripts of Josephus Antiquities use a nomen sacrum for the word Christos in the two places in which it occurs (Ant 18.63-64 and 20.200) (I would be interested if anyone knows different). The simplest explanation would be that that's what Josephus wrote. I don't think any scholar thinks that (there might be someone online who does). If Josephus wrote it at all (which I doubt), it has almost certainly been changed by Christian scribes who transmitted the text of Josephus.

So there is a difference between simplest and simplest that explains the evidence. (I apologize if you found the point banal).

I can agree with that general principle. I do still believe that, in the case of both the JtB passage and the 'brother of Jesus called Christ' line, the evidence is more simply explained by these passages being original to Josephus.

To your enumerated points:

1) Yes, you are correct that the simple excision of 'who was called Christ' would not solve the problem, at least for me. That is why I said I do not know how the passage read before Eusebius.

So, right off, we’ve got a problem with this theory that doesn’t exist with the theory that the line originally contained the ‘called Christ’ line. It’s not a major problem, but it exists and shouldn’t just be handwaved.

Richard Carrier has argued that it would solve the problem because it refers to the brother of Jesus, the son of Damneus who is mentioned in Book 20 of the Antiquities. That is a simple and elegant solution, and possible, but I think it's probably not right.

I definitely agree that this is unlikely to be the solution. The problem is that it would require Josephus to refer to this Jesus solely as ‘Jesus’ when he first brings him up, and then by his full appellation the second time he’s mentioned. From what I’ve read about the subject, Josephus’s normal practice everywhere else in his writing is the other way around; if he’s going to identify someone he names beyond their first name, he does so the first time he brings them up and then uses just the name for the rest of the references to them in that passage (unless he needs to differentiate between two people of the same name). And that is, after all, the obvious way for a historian to do it; identifying characters he mentions when he first mentions them. (I have, however, read very little Josephus; if you know of places in which he uses the format of referring to someone only by their first name on first mention and by their appellation on second mention, by all means let me know.)

(Yes, I’m aware that Carrier also propounded the theory that Josephus used ‘son of Damneus’ in both lines, but that doesn’t have legs for one minute. Carrier’s argument is that someone supposedly looked at this mention of Jesus and thought it meant the ‘called Christ’ one. That requires the ‘Jesus’ to be otherwise unidentified in the first place (and even then it’s tenuous). Nobody was going to look at ‘Jesus, son of Damneus’, and think ‘well, it says ‘son of Damneus’ but clearly it really means Jesus who was called Christ’.)

2) You skipped the fact that Origen claims Josephus attributed the destruction of Jerusalem to the Jews putting to death James who had a reputation for great righteousness among the people which we do not find in our manuscripts of Josephus.

Because I’m not seeing this as the kind of problem/mystery that interpolation advocates seem to. It’s hardly as though it’s unknown for people to read things into a text that aren’t there. On top of that, there’s the possible explanation that you’ve just given below…

We do, however, know that there was a Christian tradition that claimed James had a reputation for great righteousness among the people and at least implies that this was the reason for the Roman capture of the city. It would seem that Origen is getting this from Hegesippus (or perhaps I should say a Christian tradition best preserved in Hegesippus among extant texts). GakusieDon, to whom I still owe a reply, has suggested that Origen may be combining material from Josephus and Hegesippus and that may be so. But I think it would be difficult to explain what Origen says without recourse to him having imported ideas from Hegesippus into what he claims Josephus said.

So, since this is a perfectly plausible explanation, why the ‘without recourse’?

Theory: Origen (correctly) remembers having read a mention of James’ execution in Ant. 20. He also remembers having read a passage (either the Hegesippian passage or one now lost to us) from which he took the meaning that this was the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem. His memory erroneously combines the two and misremembers the ‘destruction of Jerusalem’ theory as having been part of the Josephan passage. He either doesn’t check, or checks briefly, sees that Ant. 20 does indeed mention James, and doesn’t look past that to realise that this book doesn’t contain the claim he remembers about this being the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem. Either way, he gets the Ant. 20 reference correct but then attributes something to it that he’s in fact remembering elsewhere.

This strikes me as rather more plausible than the idea that Origen would remember Ant. 20 as being the site of a completely non-existent mention of James’ execution, and that’s even before we get to the question of how a mention of James’ execution then showed up in that very book.

I do not think the Bernard Cornwell/Bernard Ashley analogy is quite apt. You verified your references, which was much less common in ancient authors than modern scholars, and Origen did not do it for the James passage as he claims there are things in the text which are not there.

I did check my reference, because I have options to do so that aren’t available to Origen. But my point was that I didn’t just blithely go ahead with stating that it was Bernard Cornwell (apologies, BTW, just realised I misspelled his name in my previous post) in the face of my memory being contradicted by all I knew of Cornwell’s genre.

3) No, Origen would not be *spontaneously* coming up with the phrase 'Jesus who was called Christ,' which you can't find in Origen *except when he's quoting it from Matthew*. That is kind of a big exception, particularly as the earliest place we find Origen citing the James passage is in his Commentary on Matthew, in which he quotes the phrase more than once in the extant text. Similarly, he refers to 'brothers of Jesus' as well, so the singular 'brother of Jesus' would not be alien to him.

By ‘spontaneously’, I mean using the phrase where he wasn’t quoting it from someone else. In other words, the quote from Matthew isn’t Origen coming up with it ‘spontaneously’; he’s quoting someone else. Out of all the places in which Origen refers to Jesus, the only places in which he uses ‘called Christ’ are the quotes from Matthew and the reference to the Josephan passage. That in itself strongly suggests that his reference to Josephus is, as it appears to be, another quote (or at least cite, since it’s not quite accurate enough to count as a direct quote).

(I have no objection to the hypothesis that he would have used the phrase 'brother of Jesus'.)

I've always been fascinated by the argument that a Christian author would not have said 'who is called Christ'

Is anyone actually making this argument, or is it a strawman? More to the point, I didn’t make it; what I said was that it was rare for Christian authors to say this, not that they ‘would not have’ said it.

when we find those words four times in the canonical New Testament (Matt 1.16, 27.17, 22, and John 4.25 with a different antecedent).

And of those, two usages are from the speech of non-Christians referring to Jesus, and one is an explanation that this is what the Hebrew-originating word ‘Messiah’ meant. Mt 1.16 is the only place I know of in which a Christian author spontaneously (not quoting anyone else, not explaining anyone else’s quote) uses ‘called Christ’ to describe Jesus.

I'm not aware that it's ever found in ancient Greek literature in non-Christian sources, with the single possible exception of the case under consideration (i.e., Ant. 20.200). The simplest explanation would appear to be that it is a Christian usage (though other factors may, of course, need to be considered).

One problem with that is that we have so few non-Christian sources from that time period, so that makes comparison difficult. In terms of the proportion of people from each group using that phrase, we’ve got an incredibly low proportion of users among Christians. (Another, more subtle problem, is that most of the non-Christians who were hearing the term ‘Christos’ would have been hearing it used as if it were a name, without the backstory of it being an appellation.)

4) I have argued that Eusebius composed the entirety of the Testimonium Flavianum, I'm not going to balk at having him rewrite the James passage.

The problem I have with that is proposed motivation. It’s easy to see why a Christian would have wanted to interpolate a passage extolling Jesus’s virtues. It’s a lot less easy to see why anyone would have interpolated a line saying that James, brother of Jesus ‘called Christ’ was executed.

You seem to be arguing based on the premise that I think Eusebius is annotating a copy of Josephus Antiquities, but what I'm arguing is that he wrote a version of the James passage in the Ecclesiastical History and *that* was copied into the Antiquities.[...]

Ah, my apologies; I’d seen the ‘margin annotation’ argument earlier in the thread and had mistakenly assumed you were using that argument. (An unintentionally good example of how easy it is to misattribute an argument!) I have now seen your post in the other thread; as per my reply there, I think the question is still why Eusebius would have written the passage that way.

Slightly off topic: What do you think the simplest explanation for the Testimonium Flavianum never being quoted before Eusebius is?

I think the two likely possibilities are a) it actually is entirely an interpolation, or b) a non-Christian mention of Jesus as a ‘wise man’/doer of ‘paradoxical deeds’ didn’t happen to be theologically helpful to anyone’s apologetics and so no-one had reason to quote it. Personally I’d go for b) by preference in view of the other textual evidence for partial authenticity, but either is a simple enough explanation that I don’t think I could choose the ‘simplest’ between the two.

Right; must dash as I have to prepare dinner. Thanks again for your thoughts. I'm afraid I'm not a Bernard Cornwell fan myself, though; just remembered his name as my father-in-law likes his books!

Best wishes,

Sarah

[Giuseppe]

Well, unless we can speculate a very convincing reason, I think Occam’s razor still cuts through to the much simpler explanation that the passage actually was original to Josephus

I think that you have not read my confession here, where I have given up to doubt about the authenticity of the Baptist Passage in Josephus.

As to the James passage, I stand on the position that only "called Christ" is interpolated. List's point is decisive and moves the balance towards the interpolation without even disturbing Origen and/or Hegesippus for that matter:

(1) It is not unheard of for Josephus to refer to people merely by brother or father, even brothers/fathers who are only just mentioned and have no prior acknowledgement.

(2) It makes better sense of the passage than assuming that Josephus is inexplicably referring to some figure two books previously (18.63-64).

[DrSarah]

I think that you have not read my confession here, where I have given up to doubt about the authenticity of the Baptist Passage in Josephus.

Ah, yes, my apologies; I was coming back to the thread after some considerable time and had forgotten that you had added that post.

Regarding List's article, I plan (or at least hope) to reply directly to that thread.

[Chrissy Hansen]

Well, unless we can speculate a very convincing reason, I think Occam’s razor still cuts through to the much simpler explanation that the passage actually was original to Josephus

I think that you have not read my confession here, where I have given up to doubt about the authenticity of the Baptist Passage in Josephus.

As to the James passage, I stand on the position that only "called Christ" is interpolated. List's point is decisive and moves the balance towards the interpolation without even disturbing Origen and/or Hegesippus for that matter:

(1) It is not unheard of for Josephus to refer to people merely by brother or father, even brothers/fathers who are only just mentioned and have no prior acknowledgement.

(2) It makes better sense of the passage than assuming that Josephus is inexplicably referring to some figure two books previously (18.63-64).

Yeah I'm actually working on challenging List's argument here. I have been going through Josephus and logging adelphonymics (i.e., where a person is introduced by relation to their brother), and two things are apparent:

(1) It is either used to introduce a new person who is named first (i.e., X brother of Y), and this is the only case where the "brother of Y" figure is unknown. Thus, not like the Ant. 20.200 passage. Or, (2) it is used to introduce a person by relation to a previously established figure, i.e., the brother of Y, named X. To make these a bit clearer:

(1) X [newly introduced person], the brother of Y [relation established or unestablished previously]
(2) the brother of Y [relation established previously], named X [newly introduced person]

The case of (2) is the case that best resembles our case for James 20.200 but if List or Carrier are correct and this "Jesus" was Jesus ben Damneus (JbD), then it violates Josephus' style, since JbD has not been previously mentioned and it follows the (2) pattern. I have not found any adelphonymics which are exceptions to these two patterns so far. So no, I can't find any example where Josephus introduces a new figure (James) but via relation to another completely unidentified named figure (Jesus) the latter of whom is named first.

I have found no examples (2) where X is introduced by relation to Y without Y having been previously established. So if the phrase "the brother of Jesus, called Christ, named James" is correct authentic, it is entirely exceptional. Thus, I argue the entire phrase "the brother of Jesus, called Christ" needs to be omitted. I am not sure if this James even had a previously unknown identifier. Josephus did on various occasions just name drop a random person without clarification.

[Peter Kirby]

Sure. References from Josephus similar to the phrase "one whose name was James," where there is also no noun phrase that it modifies, include Ant. 10.6.1, Ant. 11.5.4, Ant. 14.9.4, and Life 56.

[Peter Kirby]

My TF page also has this:

There is at least one other occasion in which Josephus identies an individual by identifying his brother and in which this brother is not mentioned earlier in the text.

Wars of the Jews 2.247. "After this Caesar sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to be procurator of Galilee, and Samaria, and Perea, and removed Agrippa from Chalcis unto a greater kingdom; for he gave him the tetrarchy which had belonged to Philip, which contained Batanae, Trachonitis, and Gaulonitis: he added to it the kingdom of Lysanias, and that province [Abilene] which Varus had governed. But Claudius himself, when he had administered the government thirteen years, eight months, and twenty days, died, and left Nero to be his successor in the empire, whom he had adopted by his Wife Agrippina's delusions, in order to be his successor, although he had a son of his own, whose name was Britannicus, by Messalina his former wife, and a daughter whose name was Octavia, whom he had married to Nero; he had also another daughter by Petina, whose name was Antonia."

If it's a point of word order, then I guess, sure, whatever.

[Peter Kirby]

My TF page also has the obvious claims/arguments about how this may or may not be comparable. Pallas was famous.

Arguably this pushes the question more towards how well known Jesus was, rather than how impossible the reference is on its own, independent of that.