(November 2, 2017 at 4:51 pm)speedyj1992 Wrote:(October 23, 2017 at 5:02 pm)Cyberman Wrote: Josephus did.
Ah - well, like I said, I follow Jesus, not Josephus. And Josephus, to my knowledge, never followed Jesus, so obviously we're going to disagree on certain things.
Right. Josephus was an orthodox Jew to the end of his life. As you say, he never followed Jesus. Do you really believe that he would have described Jesus as "the Christ" and basically cream his boxers over the character?
My point in saying that Josephus thought Jesus was a "terrible misfortune", or a "sad calamity" depending on the translation, if you want to hold the TF as an authentic reference, is that the context of the passage does not support it. He begins chapter 3 of his Antiquities of the Jews book XVIII with an account of Jewish protests at Pilate's opening of a new aqueduct in Caesarea, using funds sequestered from the Temple. Much bloodshed and loss of life and limb ensued.
At that point we get the TF passage, in which JC is described in such glowing terms that one might think it was written by the guy's press office.
Immediately after, without so much as a pause for breath, Antiquities continues with "About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome."
Do you honestly believe that the text following the TF passage is calling back to that passage, and not the text preceding it?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
