Jesus ben Ananus as a brother for Josephus' James

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Post Reply
Paul the Uncertain
Posts: 994
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2017 6:25 am
Contact:

Jesus ben Ananus as a brother for Josephus' James

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Jesus ben Ananus, who proclaimed woe to Jerusalem for almost eight years in Josephus' War, is about as good a candidate to be the brother of James who was illegally tried in 62 CE as the two Jesuses who appear in the Antiquities story that includes the trial.

Like them, ben Ananus bears a name that appears elsewhere in that story, which could easily be rationalized as a likely typo which Eusebius helpfully corrects. Plus, Jesus' gospel-passion-like public career began about the time of the trial and extended without interruption from then all the way to the siege itself, thus connecting the two events as few other things in Josephus' writings do.

I don't conclude from this that ben Ananus is the unique correct choice for James' brother. Even if he was the best fit, there would still be three other lively contenders, two of whose cases are nearly as good, and the fourth (James the Just) being the only one actually attested. None-of-the-above isn't eliminated, either.

However, ben Ananus' story, which is both syntactically and meaningfully related to the events of 62 through 70, plausibly contributes to our understanding of how Origen misremembered Josephus as badly as he did, and in the specific ways that he did. Origen's faulty memory explains how we'd now find ourselves reading about James the Just regardless of whom Josephus actually wrote about.

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/201 ... hus-james/
Post Reply