Posted on 03/04/2014 1:45:58 PM PST by NYer
When confronted by skeptics who believe there is no non-Christian evidence for a historical Jesus, apologists often point to the writings of the ancient Jewish historian Josephus. Skeptics may respond by claiming that Josephus never actually mentioned Jesus in his writing.
How can we respond when confronted with this claim?
Who was Josephus?
Josephus was born to a wealthy family in Judea in the year A.D. 37. In the year 66, a national revolt against Rome broke out and Josephus was appointed commander of the insurgent forces in Galilee. The resistance was crushed in the summer of 67, and he was brought before Vespasian, the Roman general charged with suppressing the revolt. Josephus predicted that Vespasian would become emperor one day, and so his life was spared, but he was kept prisoner until two years later when the prophecy came true.
After defecting to the Roman side, Josephus became an advisor to Vespasian's son, Titus. He later recorded Jewish history, especially from the first century.
Does Josephus mention Jesus in any of his writing?
In his historical work Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus writes that the Roman procurator of Judea died suddenly in A.D. 62. During a three month interregnum period, Annas the younger, son of Annas who is mentioned in Luke 3:2, John 18:3, and Acts 4:6, is appointed high priest and orders the stoning of lawbreakers:
[H]e convened a judicial session of the Sanhedrin and brought before it the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ—James by name—and some others, whom he charged with breaking the law and handed them over to be stoned to death. (Josephus, Antiquities, book 20)
This James was probably James the Just, whom St. Paul describes as “James, the brother of the Lord” (Gal.1:19). An overwhelming majority of scholars believe that this passage is authentic, but there is another mention of Jesus in Antiquities known as the Testimonium Flavianum that many are divided on:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Antiquities, Book 18)
Josephus was certainly not a Christian, and so it is unlikely that he would have used phrases like, “if it be lawful to call him a man,” or “he was the Christ.” The majority of scholars of early Judaism and experts on the writings of Josephus believe this was likely touched-up by Christian scribes at a later time. Instead, the passage probably read like this:
Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principle men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first ceased not so to do; and the race of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct even now. (J. Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, pg 55)
How can we answer objections to the Testimonium Flavianum?
Many skeptics will argue that Jospehus actually made no references to Jesus at all, and that both mentions of him were added by Christians. According to them, if the Testimonium Flavianum were removed from the text, the paragraph preceding it and the one after it flow together well. This argument is weak, however, because ancient writers would often wander from their main points. Antiquities itself contains many such digressions.
Another common skeptical claim is that no Christian authors seem to be aware of either passage until early Church historian Eusebius mentions it in the fourth century. For example, second-century theologian Origen quotes Josephus freely in his writing Contra Celsus, but, as atheist Dan Barker writes, “[He] never once used this paragraph, which would have been the ultimate ace up his sleeve” (Godless, pg 255). Given the nature of the pagan accusations against Jesus (he was born out of wedlock and died shamefully), there is nothing in the shortened version of the Testimonium that would have aided the arguments of the early Christian apologists.
Whether the surviving quotes contain Christian interpolations or not, the scholarly consensus is that Josephus did indeed know something of an obscure teacher named Jesus. What we are left with is a non-Christian account that backs up at least three main points about him: He existed, he started the Christian movement, and he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
For more information on this topic, check out Trent Horn's new DVD, Why Believe In Jesus?: A Case for the Existence, Divinity and Resurrection of Christ.
Yes, but that’s not the only reason it’s thought to be spurious. There are other points that weigh against it, such as expressions in the writing that would not be used by a Roman, the complete lack of provenance of the letter, and the very late date of “discovery”, which coincided with a period in which forgeries of this type were very common.
I don’t know about pilot, but a friend said, instead of “God is my co-pilot” he preferred to say “God is my navigator.” I guess that I can and do say “Jesus is my navigator” for He puts me on the true path, and reminds me to get back on course when I stray off of it.
Some "Christians" did the same type of thing in those days to the Septuagint, copying back into it the words reinterpreted by Paul and other New Testament writers of the Greek, such that some dim-witted translator/exegetes of today make claim that Jesus and other Christ-followers used the LXX and not the Hebrew texts as their Scriptures, using these insertions a "proof" that LXX was a better and approved version used by the Hellenized Jewish hoi polloi of that day.
This, of course, is a great flaw of the Greek Orthodoxen relying on the Septuagint as a reliable version of the Old Testament (which the English Authorized Version translation does not).
Material that does not survive in manuscript form is, even in the best of states, could only be put forward extremely loosely as “from the Roman archives.” That such a notable alleged manuscript might be simultaneously overlooked, lavishly bound, and conveniently lost taxes the limits of credibility beyond at least my own breaking point.
Good book. God is my copilot by Robert Scott. As a kid I saw the movie so I bought the book in the 9th grade. That was 50 years ago and I still am a big fan of the AVG/ flying tigers and the P-40 tomahawk /war hawk.
Oh I did correct the pilot/ Pilate thing the very next post.
“some dim-witted translator/exegetes of today make claim that Jesus and other Christ-followers used the LXX and not the Hebrew texts as their Scriptures...”
Yes, I’ve run into a few that tried to make that argument around here, and extend it to some silly lengths.
The Letter of Lentulus does exist, in Latin. It is thought to have been written in Greek in its original. So while the Greek manuscript from which it is drawn hasn’t surfaced the oldest dated Latin document is in the archive in Rome. I never mentioned anything lavishly bound, and even if it is simply apocryphal, it is not by any stretch overlooked - as it is still studied today by Catholic scholars. Lentulus is a historical personage mentioned in the Res Gestae Divi Augusti - the ancient annals of Rome. The medieval scholars who transcribed from the Vatican original (Codex Harleianus 2729) in the 15th Century said the manuscript was found inside the volume, and they found it notable enough to widely disseminate the letter into all the Catholic lands of Europe. My point has been that the humanists who had been the first to call the letter fraudulent based that judgement on the fact that no Publius Lentulus was known to be Governor of Judea, a false flag since it is now known that while no Governor of Judea bore this name a consul living at the time of Christ did. Therefore a consideration for authenticity bears greater attention. I won’t tax you with explaining the functions of a consul in ancient Rome, or to whom they might send their letters - but I will state that the Latin manuscript of the letter does exist, it (along with at least 16 translations - out of some 98 known- into common languages including English and German) rests in the Vatican archives in Rome.
I would suggest any serious scholars or those interested visit Bill Thayer’s website for his excellent ancient Greek to Latin to English translators and read some of his excellent works on Roman and American History. For starters try his LacusCurtius where many ancient texts can be found in their translations.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/home.html
Ummm.
Bookmarked.
That’s interesting. What would the color of “new wine” look like?
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