How Wrong Is Carrier About Antiquities 20.200 Scholarship?

[Peter Kirby]

And what are some of the things that Carrier is wrong about?

(I don't know. I just reread this, and I was blinded by the sheer arrogance. Help me out.)

http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12071
(dated February 15, 2017 -- in fairness, some statements may be intended to speak of the epochal findings in 2012, or 2014, or some other year)

These are serious problems any defender of this text must contend with. But even besides that, no expert opinion on this is sound that is not informed by reading Carrier 2012, the latest peer reviewed research on this matter. There I demonstrate (and you can find that article reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ):

• This James passage was unknown to Origen (despite his explicit search of Josephus for Jesus material in his answer to Celsus). All claims to the contrary until now have been mistaken on that point.
• Because in fact, it’s objectively evident that Origen mistook a story about James in Hegesippus as being in Josephus (a kind of mistake I document Origen sometimes made).
• All other accounts of the death of James the brother of Jesus do not match this one in Josephus; they therefore had no knowledge of this passage being about the Christian James (Eusebius is the first author to ever think so; and the first to ever quote it from Josephus).
• We know Acts used Josephus as a source text for historical color, yet the author of Acts never noticed this passage as being about Jesus Christ (which is inexplicable, given that if it was, then it shows Jews being punished for persecuting Christians, exactly the kind of thing the author of Acts strove to include; instead, Acts never mentions this James even being martyred).
• If Josephus had written this passage as about the persecution of Christians, he would have explained things, as is his style consistently in all his historical writing; only a Christian would just assume all those obscure things were already known to the reader (like what a “Christ” was; that James was a Christian; that Jews sought to kill Christians; and why, we must then suppose, the Jewish elite and Roman authorities opposed the killing of James if he was a Christian).
• The words tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ,” is for these and many other reasons most likely a marginal note (by Origen or Pamphilus, or another scribe or scholar in the same Library of Caesarea), expressing belief rather than fact (possibly trying to find the passage Origen claimed he’d seen here but mistakenly saw instead in Hegesippus).
• That marginal note was then accidentally interpolated into the manuscript produced or used by Eusebius (which would have been a copy of the one used by Origen), a very common form of scribal error.
• Possibly by replacing ton tou damnaiou, “the son of Damneus,” in the same place. That same line is repeated at the end of the story. Repetition of that identical phrase a few lines after may have led a scribe to suspect the marginal note was correcting a dittograph (an accidental duplication caused by a previous scribe skipping some lines by mistake, starting at the “wrong” Jesus in the story). But more likely, that duplication is exactly what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus.

All arguments against interpolation in print to date have assumed the entire passage was interpolated (not just the one phrase) and that it was deliberate (instead of accidental or conjectural). Consequently, none of those opinions is citeable. Because they have not taken into account this alternative theory of the evidence or the evidence in support of it.

[Peter Kirby]

Taking each bullet point and the first/last paragraph separately, I found 7 that seemed half-wrong to entirely wrong, with 3 that seemed mostly right.

I think it's generous to rate this as "mostly wrong," but you may feel more strongly than that if you think "Christ" in Ant. 20.200 is authentic (and I don't!)...

(Yeah, I've read the 2012 article...)

[Paul the Uncertain]

IMO, Carrier is fundamentally correct about the interpolation being an interpolation, and its "innocence."

On specific and less crucial details, Carrier may be overconfident.

- Gamaliel is about as good a guess as Damneus for the father of James and Jesus.

- What Origen recalls reading in Josephus really is pretty much there in Ant. XX, but most of it is not connected with James. Hegesippus therefore isn't much needed as an additional source.

- No doubt, Origen was familiar with the figure of James the Just, but Origen's reputed teacher Clement was, too. Thus, even if Hegesippus is somewhere in the "causal chain," he wouldn't necessarily be a proximate cause of Origen's background ideas about James' death.

- There may well not have been any "marginal note." If there was, then it could easily have been incorporated into the text, but changing two words of text after having been cued to do so, as Eusebius was miscued by Origen, doesn't need any other things to have gone wrong. Origen himself doesn't appear to be checking any source text, annotated or not, when he writes.

Supporting material is blogged at uncertaintist dot wordpress dot com (some day, the gods will alow me to post actual URL's; meanwhile, I'm not hard to find).

[Giuseppe]

Origen interpolated "called Christ". That construct IS 100% Christian.

[outhouse]

•We know Acts used Josephus as a source text for historical color

I don't think that is settled to claim such certainty

[MrMacSon]

And what are some of the things that Carrier is wrong about?

(I don't know. I just reread this, and I was blinded by the sheer arrogance. Help me out.)

http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12071
(dated February 15, 2017 -- in fairness, some statements may be intended to speak of the epochal findings in 2012, or 2014, or some other year)

These are serious problems any defender of this text must contend with. But even besides that, no expert opinion on this is sound that is not informed by reading Carrier 2012, the latest peer reviewed research on this matter. There I demonstrate (and you can find that article reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ):

1. This James passage was unknown to Origen (despite his explicit search of Josephus for Jesus material in his answer to Celsus). All claims to the contrary until now have been mistaken on that point.
2. Because in fact, it’s objectively evident that Origen mistook a story about James in Hegesippus as being in Josephus (a kind of mistake I document Origen sometimes made).
3. All other accounts of the death of James the brother of Jesus do not match this one in Josephus; they therefore had no knowledge of this passage being about the Christian James (Eusebius is the first author to ever think so; and the first to ever quote it from Josephus).
4. We know Acts used Josephus as a source text for historical color, yet the author of Acts never noticed this passage as being about Jesus Christ (which is inexplicable, given that if it was, then it shows Jews being punished for persecuting Christians, exactly the kind of thing the author of Acts strove to include; instead, Acts never mentions this James even being martyred).
5. If Josephus had written this passage as about the persecution of Christians, he would have explained things, as is his style consistently in all his historical writing; only a Christian would just assume all those obscure things were already known to the reader (like what a “Christ” was; that James was a Christian; that Jews sought to kill Christians; and why, we must then suppose, the Jewish elite and Roman authorities opposed the killing of James if he was a Christian).
6. The words tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ,” is for these and many other reasons most likely a marginal note (by Origen or Pamphilus, or another scribe or scholar in the same Library of Caesarea), expressing belief rather than fact (possibly trying to find the passage Origen claimed he’d seen here but mistakenly saw instead in Hegesippus).
7. That marginal note was then accidentally interpolated into the manuscript produced or used by Eusebius (which would have been a copy of the one used by Origen), a very common form of scribal error.
8. Possibly by replacing ton tou damnaiou, “the son of Damneus,” in the same place. That same line is repeated at the end of the story. Repetition of that identical phrase a few lines after may have led a scribe to suspect the marginal note was correcting a dittograph (an accidental duplication caused by a previous scribe skipping some lines by mistake, starting at the “wrong” Jesus in the story). But more likely, that duplication is exactly what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus.

A/ i. All arguments against interpolation in print to date have assumed the entire passage was interpolated (not just the one phrase) and that it was deliberate (instead of accidental or conjectural). ii. Consequently, none of those opinions is citeable. Because they have not taken into account this alternative theory of the evidence or the evidence in support of it.

.

"the epochal findings in 2012, or 2014" lol. Well, "no 'expert' opinion on this is sound." [note the period <-]


Let's look at Carrier's 'points', but not in the order he has listed them

3/ "All other accounts of the death of James the brother of Jesus do not match this one in Josephus; they therefore had no knowledge of this passage being about the Christian Jamesa (Eusebius is the first author to ever think so; and the first to ever quote it from Josephus)."

• a. A "Christan James" based on the canonical gospels and the epistles of Paul is a furphy (an improbable or erroneous story that is claimed to be factual)
  
  I'm pretty sure biblical accounts of the death of James do not match extra-biblical accounts.
  
  Carrier is right that "Eusebius is ...the first [person] to ever quote it from Josephus"

4/ is a good point: -

• "We know Acts used Josephus as a source text for historical color, yet the author of Acts never noticed this passage as being about Jesus Christ (which is inexplicable, given that if it was, then it shows Jews being punished for persecuting Christians, exactly the kind of thing the author of Acts strove to include; instead, Acts never mentions this James even being martyred)."

5/ is a reasonable point: -

• "If Josephus had written this passage as about the persecution of Christians, he would have explained things, as is his style consistently in all his historical writing; only a Christian would just assume all those obscure things were already known to the reader (like what a “Christ” was; that James was a Christian; that Jews sought to kill Christians; and why, we must then suppose, the Jewish elite and Roman authorities opposed the killing of James if he was a Christian)."

6/ & 7/ are reasonable speculation: -

• 6/ "The words tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ,” is for these and many other reasons most likely a marginal note (by Origen or Pamphilus, or another scribe or scholar in the same Library of Caesarea), expressing beliefb rather than fact (possibly trying to find the passage Origen claimed he’d seen here but mistakenly saw instead in Hegesippus)."
  
  • b. It may have been expressing something other than 'belief'.
  7/ "That marginal note was then accidentally interpolated into the manuscript produced or used by Eusebius (which would have been a copy of the one used by Origen), a very common form of scribal error."

8/ I think it's possible and even ~50/50 that "tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ” has noting to do with Damneus

• 8/ "Possibly by replacing ton tou damnaiou, “the son of Damneus,” in the same place. That same line is repeated at the end of the story. Repetition of that identical phrase a few lines after may have led a scribe to suspect the marginal note was correcting a dittograph (an accidental duplication caused by a previous scribe skipping some lines by mistake, starting at the “wrong” Jesus in the story). But more likely, that duplication is exactly what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus."

But Carrier could be right there: "that duplication could be what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus".


1/ "This James passage was unknown to Origen (despite his explicit search of Josephus for Jesus material in his answer to Celsus)"

• Did Origen do an explicit search of Josephus to answer Celsus?

2/ I dunno about this (am somewhat sceptical): -

• Because in fact, it’s objectively evident that Origen mistook a story about James in Hegesippus as being in Josephus (a kind of mistake I document Origen sometimes made).
  
  I can imagine Origen made mistakes and mistook origins or contexts of previous stories (many people in those times probably did)

Carrier makes a good point immediately after his list: -

• A/ i. All arguments against interpolation in print to date have assumed the entire passage was interpolated (not just the one phrase) and that it was deliberate (instead of accidental or conjectural).

But the next points are more 'meh' -

• ii. Consequently, none of those opinions is citeable. Because they have not taken into account this alternative theory of the evidence or the evidence in support of it.

Part of the problem with reading and dealing with Carrier is that he is often not clear on the way he first lays out his arguments, and even second or third re-tellings of them can be hard to follow. Also, his arrogance irks, and that affects engagement and perceptions, too.

However, he has laid this out more fully and thus better than I have seen him do before.

Also, a significant and pertinent commentary is what he wrote before that list: -

Notice how much detail is in this passage that is characteristic of Josephus as a historian: it’s three times longer than the Testimonium, yet about a much less significant event (the tumultuous transition of the high priesthood from Ananus to Jesus); we are presented with the causes and effects and reasons and motives for nearly every actor’s decisions and moves in the story; it’s a narrative with a plot, and with a lot of detail that explains what is happening and why; it cross-references things a Gentile reader might not be familiar with, such as why Ananus being a Sadducee would cause him to act this way, it even includes a back-reference to inform the reader that Josephus discussed the Sadducee sect earlier—where we find he did indeed summarize their teachings.

This is all missing from the Testimonium.

From http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12071

[austendw]

8/ I think it's possible and even ~50/50 that "tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ” has noting to do with Damneus

• 8/ "Possibly by replacing ton tou damnaiou, “the son of Damneus,” in the same place. That same line is repeated at the end of the story. Repetition of that identical phrase a few lines after may have led a scribe to suspect the marginal note was correcting a dittograph (an accidental duplication caused by a previous scribe skipping some lines by mistake, starting at the “wrong” Jesus in the story). But more likely, that duplication is exactly what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus."

But Carrier could be right there: "that duplication could be what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus".

I have to say that I have never bought this argument, because it seems totally counter-intuitive to mention "the brother of Jesus son of Damnaeus, called James" before mentioning Jesus son of Damnaeus himself. Such a phrase could have no significance to a reader, and would actually be confusing: "The brother of Jesus son of Damnaeus? Where did he come from? Was he mentioned earlier?" ... provoking a frantic search for a previous reference to this Jesus.

Had this relationship between James and Jesus son of Damnaeus been what Josephus wanted to convey, the natural way to do it would be to write that "Ananus... brought before them James son of Damnaeus and others" and, at the end of the story, say that "Jesus, the brother of James son of Ananus" was made high priest. That's the natural, logical and clear way of narrating the story. But the text as we have it doesn't support that. The only way this James could have been a son of Damnaeus is if there had been a previous reference to Jesus son of Damnaeus; the structure of the sentence demands it.

A good comparative example is the start of this very section where Josephus says that: "ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς ... τῷ δὲ Ἀνάνου παιδὶ καὶ αὐτῷ Ἀνάνῳ λεγομένῳ τὴν διαδοχὴν τῆς ἀρχῆς ἔδωκεν" "But the king ... bestowed on the son of Ananus, also called Ananus, the succession to that dignity." (AJ 20.197) Here, he writes "son of Ananus" before mentioning the name because the older Ananus has appeared before in the narrative - indeed writing it this way puts some stress on this: Ananus was appointed because he was the son of the older Ananus. But in our James passage we have nothing of the sort. James son of Damnaeus hasn't been mentioned so it is not clear why Josephus didn't simply write "James son of Jesus".

But I have another proposal. What no-one seems to point out is that the one phrase that is an unquestionable gloss is the name "James" itself - which doesn't appear within the grammatical fabric of the sentence as "Ananus killed James the brother of Jesus etc" (i.e. with "James" and "brother" both in the accusative as "Ἰάκωβον, ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ"). Instead it we see "ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ," Here "brother" in the accusative, but "James" is in the nominative, as subject of an entirely separate clause - literally: "to whom James the name", which I think is rather awkwardly expressed.

When we compare this to the example of the son of Ananus earlier we see that there is a difference. In the earlier phrase "τῷ δὲ Ἀνάνου παιδὶ καὶ αὐτῷ Ἀνάνῳ λεγομένῳ" we read "to the son (dative) of Ananus, also called (dative) Ananus (dative)". Here the name of the younger Ananus agrees perfectly with word "son" - all are in the dative (ie as recipients of the priesthood); the name is perfectly tied into the grammatical fabric of the sentence. But in the case of James this simply isn't the case; the name appears in a clause, removal of which would not disrupt the grammar of the sentence one iota. This suggests that Josephus originally did not inclde the name of this man at all - presumably because he didn't know it. The clause in question, orginally a marginal gloss, was introduced later. If that was the case, then it's not unreasonable to propose this scenario was this: A Christian read in the text before him that "Ananus ....brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ and some others" and he, knowing that the famously martyred brother of Jesus was called James, added the name in the margin, and soon it was copied into the text proper.

I suppose one might argue that this solves the earlier problem: as Josephus didn't know the name of the man in question, he had no option but to refer to him as "the brother of Jesus son of Damnaeus" but I still don't think this works. In that case, surely the natural thing would have been for Josephus to write that Ananus "brought before them some men" and only at the very end reveal that the new appointment to the high priesthood was "Jesus son of Damnaeus, the brother of one of the men killed be Ananus". That would make sense because it refers back to something we have just been told, not forward to a person we haven't yet heard of.

Now I want to make absolutely clear that am by no means insisting that the words "called the Christ" cannot themselves be a gloss or amendment - they could have themselves been added before the James addition. But it does slightly change the terrain on which the discussion takes place. The two conclusions that I think can be drawn are:

(1) Josephus didn't originaly know the name of this man

(2) He was the brother of someone mentioned earlier in Antiquities. There may be very good arguments for think that "called the Christ" was interpolated or even "Jesus called the Christ", but if so, then the original text must still have referred to someone who had been mentioned earlier in the narrative.

Of course, if there are instances where Josephus links someone to a person he hasn't yet mentioned (I mean without any helpful qualification like "whom I'll talk about later") then that would undercut the second point, but I don't know of any such examples. Does anyone else?

[Paul the Uncertain]

Origen interpolated "called Christ". That construct IS 100% Christian.

Yes, it is, but I doubt Origen personally altered any copy of Josephus. The "called Christ" phrase appears three times in Matthew, the subject of one of the books where Origen records his misrecollection of Josephus.

Given that Origen gives no indication that he intends to be quoting anything from Josephus verbatim, it is entirely possible that he assumed his Christian readers would recognize where he got the specific, distinctive phrase - from Matthew. The idea that Origen was quoting anything verbatim, and only these few words in a sea of (flawed, but well intended) paraphrase, may well be original with Eusebius.

[andrewcriddle]

IF one wishes to argue that Jesus the son of Damneus was the brother of the James executed by Ananus and was made High Priest as a response to the killing of James, then I think one must see the execution of James as political not personal. I can't take seriously the idea of someone being made high priest as a consolation for the death of his brother. More specifically I think one must regard the execution of James as a measure taken by Ananus as a Sadducee against James as a non-Sadducee (probably a Pharisee). In this case Jesus the son of Damneus must also have ben opposed to the Sadducees. (In order for his appointment to have been an act in support of the opponents of Ananus outraged by the killing of James).

The idea of Jesus the son of Damneus as an opponent of the Sadducees is difficult to reconcile with the importance of Ananias son of Nebedeus during the high priesthood of Jesus. (The clear implication of Acts 23 is that Ananias the high priest who wished to condemn Paul was a Sadducee and that Paul responded by appealing against Ananias to the Pharisees.)

It is more likely that Jesus the son of Damneus was appointed due to being uninvolved in the controversies of Ananus' high priesthood, than that he was appointed as a representative of one of the factions.

Andrew Criddle

[MrMacSon]

...I doubt Origen personally altered any copy of Josephus. The "called Christ" phrase appears three times in Matthew, the subject of one of the books where Origen records his misrecollection of Josephus.

Given that Origen gives no indication that he intends to be quoting anything from Josephus verbatim, it is entirely possible that he assumed his Christian readers would recognize where he got the specific, distinctive phrase - from Matthew. The idea that Origen was quoting anything verbatim, and only these few words in a sea of (flawed, but well intended) paraphrase, may well be original with Eusebius.

Carrier proposed -

• The words tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ,” is ..most likely a marginal note (by Origen or Pamphilus, or another scribe or scholar in the same Library of Caesarea), expressing belief rather than fact (possibly trying to find the passage Origen claimed he’d seen here but mistakenly saw instead in Hegesippus).
• That marginal note was then accidentally interpolated into the manuscript produced or used by Eusebius (which would have been a copy of the one used by Origen), a very common form of scribal error.

Carrier has elsewhere proposed if there was incorporation of such a marginal note into Antiq 20.200 / 20.9.1, it may have been by or in the time of Pamphilus rather than by Eusebius.
.