DrSarah wrote: ↑Mon Feb 05, 2024 1:17 pm
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.
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.
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).
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
I've always been fascinated by the argument that a Christian author would not have said 'who is called Christ' 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). 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).
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. 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. Eusebius does not quote the James passage in his earlier work, the Demonstratio, which has a slightly different version of the Testimonium Flavianum (in DE 3.5), though he does cite an abbreviated version of the martyrdom of James the the Just (also in DE 3.5).
Slightly off topic: What do you think the simplest explanation for the Testimonium Flavianum never being quoted before Eusebius is?
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Best,
Ken
PS I did not address the issue of Josephus referring to Jesus as Christ, but this is already a long post and I think that would require another about as long.
PPS Love Bernard Cornwell