arnoldo wrote:
Thanks, it just seems that when it suits you, you are willing to accept a scholar's (Professor James S McLaren) clairvoyant analysis of Josephus.
Conclusion: Josephus created Judas the Galilean as a foil to bear the responsibility for the humiliation of the Jewish defeat. I’m not saying that Judas did not exist (though he may not have) but that Josephus has been forced to modify his account with each retelling of his role in starting the rebellion. These variations indicate that Josephus is creatively rewriting history to deflect blame for the war from his own class of aristocratic priests.
http://vridar.org/2016/04/05/did-joseph ... inst-rome/
However, demand "evidence" to back Feldman's claim that Josephus minimized David's messianic qualities in his writings. BTW, Professor James S McLaren's understanding of Josephus may be absolutely right however there is no way of knowing for sure, epistemologically speaking.
Arnolodo, there is a difference between "willing to accept" someone's view and "willing to understand the arguments and evidence for" a scholar's view. You will notice, for example, what I found attractive about M's analysis:
Further, he understands the necessity of evidence external to his source material for corroboration.
Who he was, what he did and what he advocated, if anything at all, need to be established afresh, outside the framework provided in War and Antiquities.
Evidence, sound historical method. That's what I look for. Not just mere assertion.
So when you say M is using mind-reading as the basis of his interpretation you are flat wrong and have obviously not bothered to read the post you are using against me. He uses evidence of the kind I believe is valid and we explain why.
My point is that there is so much assumption carried into even scholarly interpretations of the Bible and Josephus that it is difficult to recognize as mere assumption. Certain ideas and interpretations are so familiar to us because they stem from our religious convictions or cultural teachings.
I am attempting to point out that the assumptions that Josephus was somehow too nervous to write anything directly about messianic ideas is just one of these ad hoc assumptions that we have inherited. The simplest way of interpreting the evidence is that messianic issues were not particularly prominent upon Josephus's radar. Most of the texts used to "prove" the existence of "messianic hopes" do not ever mention "messiah" at all. The simplest interpretation is that they were not addressing messianism.
But we get tied up in knots at this point because we are so indoctrinated into believing that certain ideas are by definition messianic so that it doesn't matter if the word 'messiah' doesn't appear -- the ideas are there and that's all that matters.
Fair enough -- perhaps -- but what do we do with the scholarship (of some pretty respectable mainstream scholars, even Christians, too) that demonstrates from the evidence that the messianic definition or understanding of that constellation of ideas actually derives from well AFTER the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
What do we do when we find that the evidence from the relevant era (and not opinions retrospectively imputed into the evidence from centuries later) actually indicates that many of those ideas were held without any messianic connotations at all. For example, many actually believed that God would directly restore Israel and rule -- without any messiah as an intermediary. And some, as I have recently learned, believed that the Davidic promises were transferred to Israel as a nation. And there are a range of other views. I have covered some of these in other discussions, including an analysis of PsSol 17.