MrMacSon
Authenticity is an issue, but reasonable as a premise for engaging with a poster who accepts these writings.
I am open to the possibility that there was a Claudian-era Roman rabble-rouser called "Chrestus." If there was, then it sounds like his admirers were rough trade. Who knows, maybe arsonists for hire lurked among the remnants of his fan club into Nero's time. Tacitus is just the sort who might patronize his inferiors for confusing the words
Chrestus and
Christos, while he himself blithely mistakes a criminal gang from the past for another, more current, one.
Alas, the possibilities are endless, and might well include some pro-active intervention by the Holy Ministry of Truth.
Bernard
OK, but it's a tangle.
One strand is the Christian portrait of James. If it isn't so (James thought his dead brother was not Christ), then why would Josephus single James out from among the plural defendants and identify him solely by his kinship to somebody whom no stakeholder thought him to be what he was "called," for an audience that cannot really be expected even to know what a Christ is?
If James had a false reputation in the 90's as a pioneering Christian leader, then Josephus would know the truth. So, Josephus brings up the matter, alludes to the (false) reputation, but Josephus keeps the exciting truth to himself? That's a hard sell.
If James didn't have some kind of reputation in the 90's, then why is Josephus singling him out but not explaining why James would be interesting to the audience?
Example: In real life, a former Boston mob leader (James "Whitey"Bulger) is a brother to a former president of the University of Massachusetts (William). If I am writing for an audience outside New England, and had occasion to mention William, then
- I could hardly assume that my audience knows and would readily recall who Whitey is (even though Johnny Depp played him in the movie - was Jesus bigger than that in 90's Rome?), and
- If all I say about William, really all, is that his brother is a reputed mobster, then I am at best spinning and at worst being outrightly deceitful.
The first point would make me a lousy writer and the second would make me a lousy witness. Josephus is neither (or if he is that dicey a witness, then ought we uncritically accept what he thinks about James?).
If further, Wiiliam weren't such a prominent person, then why would I both pick him out of an otherwise anonymous group, and also give no explanation why I did that, except to say that his brother is somebody you may or may not have heard about? And I refrain from helping your recollection if you have ever heard of him and from giving you much of a clue if you haven't.
If really further, William was widely but falsely believed to be a former university president, but I knew the truth, then why would I bring him up, allude to his false reputation, and not tell what I knew? That would be the knowing and intentional perpetuation of a lie - back to lousy witness.
I did not say and think that.
I didn't say or think you did. You said Josephus had a purpose for writing about the trial. I replied that he also had a purpose for singling out James, and observed that that was a distinct purpose. What he supposedly wrote about James has no expressed connection to why he wrote about the trial. Thus, his purpose in writing about the trial doesn't explain what he is supposed to have written about James.
In contrast, if Josephus wrote what some people conjecture he wrote, then that would both identiify James for the audience and adequately explain what mentioning James specifically had to do with the point in reporting the trial.
I cannot understand what you mean in the last sentence.
There are two things to explain:
- (worthwhile) why identify James and only James among the defendants?
- (enough) why identify James solely by tersely describing his brother, using unexplained ethnic and in-group jargon?