What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

The best founded case is the case for partial authenticity. It contains some language which is clearly not Josephan but that is mainly in the parts that are obviously things Josephus would not say. It also contains some language which is distinctively Josephan. Then we have three early variants in Jerome, Agapius and Michael the Syrian which don't only differ from the textus receptus, but differ in precisely the places we'd expect them to if they reflect an earlier, unaltered original - the parts that are things Josephus would not say.

All this indicates that these parts were added to an earlier original mention of Josephus. This also fits with the later reference to "that Jesus who was called Messiah" in Bk XX because (i) that reference makes more sense if it was referring back to the Bk XVIII account and (ii) the textual variants indicate that the "he was the Messiah" in the current text was originally "he was called the Messiah".

Vermes' reconstruction seems pretty likely to me:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man . . . For he was one who performed paradoxical deeds and was the teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews [and many Greeks?]. He was [called] the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him . . . And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

Some of the language in the most likely interpolated parts is very similar to that used by Eusebius, but it is hard to say for sure. It's clear that the interpolations were added in the early fourth century though.

I wonder if this is a case where a very pious Christian scribe felt the need to insert editorial comments to the words of Josephus that seemed to border on blasphemy to this scribe? Later scribes could not distinguish the editorial comments from the text and unintentionally created this apparently clumsy forgery? In other words it was margin notes instead of a deliberate forgery?