Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

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Peter Kirby
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Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Peter Kirby »

Agree or disagree, it's worth checking out:

https://historyforatheists.com/category ... mythicism/

One of the most useful tidbits from this series is the way that he dispenses with the hypothesis that "called the Christ" was a gloss added in Ant. 20.200. It's a simple and elegant argument. If this were the gloss, either the name Jesus was introduced without any context, or there was previously a context provided ("ben Damneus") that is repeated verbatim a few lines down. Yet neither option in this dilemma is tenable, from an analysis of the other references in Josephus and the way people are introduced in his works. That leaves the most likely conclusion: either the name Jesus was present with the identification standing there, or the interpolation was at least somewhat larger.

I recall that Doherty favored a hypothesis where "a certain James" stood there originally. This is one of a few ways that Doherty's slender original 1999 book The Jesus Puzzle still outshines many other attempts in the same vein, even though every more recent writer is familiar with it.
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Giuseppe »

Damneus may be equivalent to Latin Damnatus.

A case of damnatio memoriae ?
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Giuseppe »

I should find where I read about a different interpretation of the entire passage: James was allied with Ananus against not better specified "some" and therefore James was not the victim of Ananus.
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Giuseppe »

This is the source of that different interpretation:

I also have considered a different interpretation of the Ant. 20 James “brother of Jesus called Christ” passage than heretofore (to my knowledge) considered. That passage, understood to tell of the death of James, is dated by Josephus at about the very same time as, independently, the trial of Jesus b. Ananias, i.e. ca. 62 or 63 Albinus. (The exact absolute date of Albinus’s start as governor is not quite certain, due to uncertainty concerning the end date of predecessor governor Festus–the dates found in standard discussions for those are reconstructed with various reasonings, but fall short of hard evidence in perhaps a ca. 1-2 yr. range of uncertainty there.) I have considered that what underlay the story of Ant 20 may have been James, “brother of Jesus”–perhaps the very Jesus who had just been tried and released?–accusing those who had been responsible for charging Jesus and unsuccessfully attempting to have him executed by the Roman governor. That is, James of Ant 20 is brought forward as the accusing witness, and it is the “others” (not James) who were the unspecified lawbreakers delivered up to be judicially stoned by high priest Ananias, on the basis of testimony leveled by witness James. James himself, in this conjectured alternative interpretation (even if the Greek text of Ant. differs or is unclear in wording on this), would not be executed in 62 ce. It is the “others” who were stoned, due to charges testified to by prosecution witness James, “brother of Jesus”. (Clan payback for the trial of Jesus?) And Josephus himself, as a further passing note, may have been absent in Rome in his trip by ship to Rome at that time, lacking personal familiar knowledge of the events and specifics transpiring in Jerusalem in his absence.

https://vridar.org/2020/12/10/another-p ... ent-125272 (my bold)

Hence, if the construct 'called Christ' is genuine, then it could refer the Jesus ben Ananias (mentioned previously as released by Albinus) or the Jesus of the Christians... ...or both!
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by maryhelena »

Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:15 pm Agree or disagree, it's worth checking out:

https://historyforatheists.com/category ... mythicism/

One of the most useful tidbits from this series is the way that he dispenses with the hypothesis that "called the Christ" was a gloss added in Ant. 20.200. It's a simple and elegant argument. If this were the gloss, either the name Jesus was introduced without any context, or there was previously a context provided ("ben Damneus") that is repeated verbatim a few lines down. Yet neither option in this dilemma is tenable, from an analysis of the other references in Josephus and the way people are introduced in his works. That leaves the most likely conclusion: either the name Jesus was present with the identification standing there, or the interpolation was at least somewhat larger.

I recall that Doherty favored a hypothesis where "a certain James" stood there originally. This is one of a few ways that Doherty's slender original 1999 book The Jesus Puzzle still outshines many other attempts in the same vein, even though every more recent writer is familiar with it.
While Richard Carrier's mythicist theory might have it's faults, he has at least attempted to deal with the possibility that there was no historical gospel Jesus. Finding fault, as O'Neill does with Jesus mythicists is the easy bit - what he cannot do is establish historicity for the gospel Jesus figure. Finding fault is all very well - but things do not stop there - one moves on, one moves forward, correct errors where observed and reach out for better understanding. O'Neill is simply wallowing in his fault finding puddle.....For myself, I have more important things to be doing than splashing about in his muddy puddle....
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Peter Kirby »

maryhelena wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:52 am
Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:15 pm Agree or disagree, it's worth checking out:

https://historyforatheists.com/category ... mythicism/

One of the most useful tidbits from this series is the way that he dispenses with the hypothesis that "called the Christ" was a gloss added in Ant. 20.200. It's a simple and elegant argument. If this were the gloss, either the name Jesus was introduced without any context, or there was previously a context provided ("ben Damneus") that is repeated verbatim a few lines down. Yet neither option in this dilemma is tenable, from an analysis of the other references in Josephus and the way people are introduced in his works. That leaves the most likely conclusion: either the name Jesus was present with the identification standing there, or the interpolation was at least somewhat larger.

I recall that Doherty favored a hypothesis where "a certain James" stood there originally. This is one of a few ways that Doherty's slender original 1999 book The Jesus Puzzle still outshines many other attempts in the same vein, even though every more recent writer is familiar with it.
While Richard Carrier's mythicist theory might have it's faults, he has at least attempted to deal with the possibility that there was no historical gospel Jesus. Finding fault, as O'Neill does with Jesus mythicists is the easy bit - what he cannot do is establish historicity for the gospel Jesus figure. Finding fault is all very well - but things do not stop there - one moves on, one moves forward, correct errors where observed and reach out for better understanding. O'Neill is simply wallowing in his fault finding puddle.....For myself, I have more important things to be doing than splashing about in his muddy puddle....
So the biggest fault of O'Neill is that he spends too much time finding faults.

To my ear, this is a beatification by restrained insult.
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

One difficulty with O'Neill's analysis is that ben Damneus is only one candidate for the Jesus mentioned. In the same coherent story unit, there is another priestly Jesus, ben Gamaliel. Any argument that makes James worth mentioning if he were a son of Damneus makes equal and identical sense if he were a son of Gamaliel.

Nor are those two the only available Jesuses who weren't called Christ but who may have been worthy of brief mention if applicable. There is the mentally unhinged Jesus ben Ananus from the Jewish Wars whose public debut was in the fall of 62 CE. The trial of James was held in the summer of 62 CE. As with Damneus and Gamaliel, a (different) Ananus also appears in the coherent story block, setting the stage for possible scribal error.

It may be satisfying to the historian to imagine an unobserved "gloss" as an intermediate form (to borrow a concept from biology). However, since the gloss is neither observed evidence nor much needed given what's in the story block and what kinds of copying errors are easy to make, the gloss tangent is essentially irrelevant to the likelihoods among the contending hypotheses.

The chief authentication of the received passage is Origen's. Josephus did in fact write much of what Origen remembers about Book 20 (e.g. that God supposedly punished Jerusalem for one or more killing that occurred there), but only a little of it pertained to James.

Origen needs no never-seen "gloss." He makes the same category of memory mistake that Bart Ehrmann made in recent years when he "remembered" a new version of Pliny's correspondence with Trajan. It is the same category of mistake Jerome made when he placed Josephus's "Temple voices" incident at the time of the gospel crucifixon.

I don't have a simple tag on the blog for just this aspect of the problem, but the substantiation of the principal points made in this post were published as:

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/201 ... w-brother/

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/201 ... o-do-that/

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

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/202 ... an-origen/
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by maryhelena »

Peter Kirby wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:07 am
maryhelena wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:52 am
Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:15 pm Agree or disagree, it's worth checking out:

https://historyforatheists.com/category ... mythicism/

One of the most useful tidbits from this series is the way that he dispenses with the hypothesis that "called the Christ" was a gloss added in Ant. 20.200. It's a simple and elegant argument. If this were the gloss, either the name Jesus was introduced without any context, or there was previously a context provided ("ben Damneus") that is repeated verbatim a few lines down. Yet neither option in this dilemma is tenable, from an analysis of the other references in Josephus and the way people are introduced in his works. That leaves the most likely conclusion: either the name Jesus was present with the identification standing there, or the interpolation was at least somewhat larger.

I recall that Doherty favored a hypothesis where "a certain James" stood there originally. This is one of a few ways that Doherty's slender original 1999 book The Jesus Puzzle still outshines many other attempts in the same vein, even though every more recent writer is familiar with it.
While Richard Carrier's mythicist theory might have it's faults, he has at least attempted to deal with the possibility that there was no historical gospel Jesus. Finding fault, as O'Neill does with Jesus mythicists is the easy bit - what he cannot do is establish historicity for the gospel Jesus figure. Finding fault is all very well - but things do not stop there - one moves on, one moves forward, correct errors where observed and reach out for better understanding. O'Neill is simply wallowing in his fault finding puddle.....For myself, I have more important things to be doing than splashing about in his muddy puddle....
So the biggest fault of O'Neill is that he spends too much time finding faults.
No - the biggest fault is that he has got stuck there....

To my ear, this is a beatification by restrained insult.
That's not on my agenda.....
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Just as a mopping up note on the Carrier-O'Neill version of the James problem. In addition to the gloss that nobody's ever seen nor contributes much to any hypothesis in contention, Carrier also introduces the gratuitous complication that Origen might be confusing Hegesippus with Josephus.

The evidence in black letters is that Origen confused his recollection of Josephus with the similar but distinct actual text of Josephus. Whether Hegesippus did or didn't help Origen form the mistaken memory is both unobserved and unnecessary to explain what is observed.

By his own autobiographical statements, Carrier was a fairly recent "convert" to Bayesianism when he first formalized his theories of the James reference. There's no question that he understands the principles involved here (e.g. violating Occam's razor can only decrease the plausibility of the burdened hypothesis compared with the plausibility of the corresponding unburdened hypothesis). That's so fundamental that it's not even peculiar to subjective probability among normative uncertain reasoning strategies.

Carrier seems (to me) to neglect that tangential accretions (maybe there was a gloss, maybe Hegesippus contributed to Origen's confusion) can make for a more entertaining or satisfying story, but cannot add to the probability that Origen misremembered what he read in Josephus, and then his authoritative reputation and confident insistence influenced later writers, especially Eusebius, to follow suit about what was written in Josephus. (It also helped that there would be no easy way, comparable with modern electronic search, to establish that Josephus hadn't written what Origen misrecalls somewhere in his Antiquities.)
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Re: Tim O'Neill's Jesus Mythicism blog series

Post by Secret Alias »

The best argument for some sort of knowledge of Jesus is that the dating in Josephus seems to fit with the Acts of Pilate. In other words it's at least Pre-Irenaean certainly pre-Nicene.
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