RE: Josephus and other contemporaries on Jesus
July 3, 2018 at 2:15 pm
(This post was last modified: July 3, 2018 at 2:17 pm by JairCrawford.)
I will admit, the TF, even if you take away the most obvious interpolations, still seems to have some issues.
The James reference seems authentic to my eyes, though. Because if you remove the "who was called Christ", then we don't know which Jesus he's talking about. And if this is supposed to be the same person as the Jesus Damneus mentioned later on, it doesn't make sense that he wouldn't clarify who this person is in the first line but only later on.
Now, -if- this James passage is authentic, I wonder if the TF was more than simply an added forgery. What if it was a cover-up? It wouldn't be illogical for Josephus to mention this Jesus who was called Christ again, if needed, but what if he only had very bad things to say about him?
Would that not then give Eusebius (or someone in his vein) the perfect reason to redact what might have originally been said and replace it with his own writing instead?
It would also explain the argument from silence. If this scenario were the case, first of all, the early church would have no reason to call into question Jesus' existence because it was relatively common knowledge. But when politics got involved, hmm, then it becomes time for damage control.
Much of this is speculative, so don't assume I'm stating my current thinking as absolute truth. I'm just thinking out loud here.
The James reference seems authentic to my eyes, though. Because if you remove the "who was called Christ", then we don't know which Jesus he's talking about. And if this is supposed to be the same person as the Jesus Damneus mentioned later on, it doesn't make sense that he wouldn't clarify who this person is in the first line but only later on.
Now, -if- this James passage is authentic, I wonder if the TF was more than simply an added forgery. What if it was a cover-up? It wouldn't be illogical for Josephus to mention this Jesus who was called Christ again, if needed, but what if he only had very bad things to say about him?
Would that not then give Eusebius (or someone in his vein) the perfect reason to redact what might have originally been said and replace it with his own writing instead?
It would also explain the argument from silence. If this scenario were the case, first of all, the early church would have no reason to call into question Jesus' existence because it was relatively common knowledge. But when politics got involved, hmm, then it becomes time for damage control.
Much of this is speculative, so don't assume I'm stating my current thinking as absolute truth. I'm just thinking out loud here.
