Doubting again about the Baptist Passage in Josephus...

[Giuseppe]

Allen, Nicholas Peter Legh. “Josephus, Origen, and John the Baptist: Exposing a Christian Apologist’s Deceit.”

Origen must now be considered the primary suspect for what is possibly a third century CE Christian forgery.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10. ... 17.1317008

[Peter Kirby]

Nice to be cited.

[Peter Kirby]

Origen the Deceiver [???]
At the outset, it must also be accepted that Origen (184/185–253/254 CE), either by
dint of personal conviction or blatant duplicity, is quite capable of academic dishonesty
whenever there is a dearth of valid substantiation for his dubious opinions. One very
good example of his deceit [?] is witnessed in his account in Contra Celsum (Cels.) 1.51,
where he attempts to substantiate the then prevalent assumption that a particular cave
in Bethlehem was Jesus’s birth place. Origen needs this to be treated as prima facie
evidence that Jesus was undeniably of divine birth. Furthermore, he only has recourse
to the populist notion, still highly prevalent today, that if enough individuals believe
something to be true then it probably is. Thus he needs to stress that Jesus’s claimed
birthplace is a certainty and still exists. He also needs to exaggerate the number of
persons who accept this improbable notion. Further, he strives to expound that this
self-same locale for the nativity event was divinely prophesied in Jewish antiquity.
Accordingly, to assist his recapitulation, Origen (Cels. 1.51) resorts to expressing a
blatant [?] falsehood:

Moreover, I am of opinion that, before the advent of Christ, the chief priests and scribes of the
people, on account of the distinctness and clearness of this prophecy, taught that in Bethlehem
the Christ was to be born. And this opinion had prevailed also extensively among the Jews.

Origen is also not averse to alleging numerous Jewish prophecies that supposedly
foretold the arrival Jesus of Nazareth as Christ and undeniably, in Cels. 3.28, he typically
makes the following ingenuous [?] statement:

the whole Jewish people who were hanging in expectation of the coming of Him who was
looked for, did, after the advent of Jesus, fall into a keen dispute with each other; and that a great
multitude of them acknowledged Christ, and believed Him to be the object of prophecy.

This kind of statement is quite false on many levels, yet Origen confidently employs it
as if it were compelling evidence.

He wrote a PhD dissertation, and this is what he comes up with?

I'm not even sure it'd make a solid OP on this forum.

I think you've made many posts that were more compelling, Giuseppe.

[Peter Kirby]

Indeed, the original text could have read as follows: “and
brought before them Israel son of Abraham and his followers” or even “and brought
before them Jesus son of Ananus, Michael son of Fabus and James son of Abraham” or
any other permutation one cares to imagine. This one simple and certainly ingenuous
act of swapping out the now long lost names

This is yet another interpolation hypothesis. Would you argue that it is the strongest such interpolation hypothesis? Somehow I don't think this will persuade even others in the interpolation hypothesis camp to abandon their ideas and adopt this.

[Peter Kirby]

Firstly, fortunately for Eusebius (on this one occasion), he cannot be linked to this
possible forgery given the level of agreement between the suspected interpolation (i.e.
“the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ”) and the statements made by Origen some
eight decades earlier. Therefore, if foul play is speculated it is almost certain that Origen
(rightly or wrongly) will be amongst the more likely suspects.

I suspect that Ken Olson, for example, would consider this to be a mistaken line of reasoning.

i.e., that Eusebius could still be on the table if, for whatever reason, the phrasing was original to Origen.

Since both hypotheses would involve the phrasing being original to Origen, I'm not sure how NPL Allen would argue against others who hold different interpolation hypotheses and suspect it is post-Origen. (Those who do not adopt an interpolation hypothesis could of course agree with NPL Allen and say that the phrasing was not original to Origen.)

It can be mentioned that NPL Allen appears to leave open whether to attribute an interpolation to Origen or someone before Origen.

[Peter Kirby]

Secondly, if a Christian interpolator merely saw a convenient chance to insert some
reference to “Jesus” called “Christ,” without disrupting the original text too greatly, he
certainly had no need or desire to elaborate upon his easily achieved forgery.

The hypothesis is actually weaker than other interpolation hypotheses because (among other reasons) it is not "ingenuous" (innocent - as NPL Allen suggests at one point) and so the scope of opportunity to "elaborate" was accordingly greater, given that the hypothesis suggested involves the text being purposely disrupted.

[Peter Kirby]

That, after all, is the primary reason behind the forgery – a historical
record, other than a gospel account, that confirms the mortal existence of Jesus (of
Nazareth) as well as James the Just.

So far there has been (a) no evidence that there is a forgery here and (b) no evidence that this is the motive for the forgery, if there was one. Nonetheless NPL Allen feels free to discredit (for bias, ideology, assumptions, not being evidence driven, etc) those who would disagree with him with regularity even in this formal essay.

[Peter Kirby]

If we ignore for the
moment the names that appear in the JP in line 200 we realise that we are told precious
little about the reasons (political or otherwise) behind the arrests of the men and the
nature of their crime. Perhaps this is why in his De viris illustribus (Vir. ill.) 2, written in
c. 392–393 CE, Jerome felt it so necessary to palpably falsify aspects of the account and
embroider on it with very detailed reasons (that best suited his apologetic agenda) as was
observed earlier (cf. Vir. ill. 2). Jerome has the high priest Ananus “taking advantage of
the state of anarchy,” assembling a council and publicly compelling James (the Just) to
deny that Jesus as the “Christ” is the “Son of God.”

If I can be so daring, this unwittingly suggests the unstated historical context, reflected in Josephus.

Breakers of the law = bother of Jesus people.

Jerome is embroidering, but maybe also not too far from the truth.

[Peter Kirby]

We also need to ask this pertinent question: “Why would the execution of a small
group of, say, religious law breakers (whether or not justified), be of such concern to
a Roman procurator?”

Government is sometimes called the monopoly on violence. That's what I read from the passage. The affront is to Roman authority and not respecting Roman governance.

[Peter Kirby]

Carrier, who is a committed sceptic, agrees that the reference to James as brother of Jesus is implausible

Has either Carrier or NPL Allen shown it to be "implausible"?