MERGED: The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part 1) & (Part 2)

[Jenny A]

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Josephus, for example is almost the only source available for the Jewish revolts in the 1st Century. He was an eyewitness to much of the what he says in Jewish Wars.

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[Josephus] was a Jewish general who became a traitor and afterward a Roman proponent and Jewish apologist (an uneasy position if there ever was one). Historians keep this in mind when assessing the veracity of Josephus. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/...ephus.html Quite naturally he obviously alters his own part in events. And his descriptions of his own involvement differ in Life and Jewish Wars. http://www.josephus.org/FlJosephus2/bloomRevolt.htm

He also patterns his writing on those of Thucydides and Polybius and exaggerates an invents great speeches and dialogue in much the same way that they did. http://www.josephus.org/FlJosephus2/bloomRevolt.htm Archeology does and does not bare him out.

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Notice that none of the above has anything to do with Jesus. It has to do with the puzzle of determining what happened a couple thousand years ago when when we have only limited biased sources. Consequently, there are many historical controversies over events in the 1st and 2nd centuries.

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The book you are quoting is Jewish Antiquities. It is a history of the Jewish people. In it Josephus attempts to provide a picture of the Hebrews that will make the Greeks and Romans find them worthy of study. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_of_the_Jews
emphasis mine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_of_the_Jews

And? What the hell does any of that have to do with the passage in question?

You suggested nay sayers found Josephus unreliable only when he is talking about Jesus. You're wrong. The Antiquities is generally not all that reliable for the reasons stated above. His goal in Antiquities was to make the Hebrews look worthy of Greek and Roman study. As I noted in the part of my post you pulled from your quote, he goes so far as to have Moses teaching the Egyptians science. When discussing Jesus, what he really wants to get in there is there is that there was a wise man accepted by the Greeks and that there are still Greeks following him.

He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks.

In other words, we have no way of knowing if he had any information about Jesus, or if he was just reporting the existence of Christians and what Christians had to say about themselves because a Jewish sect accepted by Greeks would be a big deal to him.

That plus the obvious Christian later interpolations in the Jesus text in Josephus, and it shouldn't surprise you that there is much controversy about it.

Well, there shouldn't be any controversy now. We know it was interpolated and we know what parts were interpolated...fine, you can have that...but what about the rest of the passage?

We are not throwing out the baby with the water here.

The question is whether there is a baby in all that bath water. Once there are interpolations, it's always hard to tease out the original. This case is no different.

Others have picked up Pliny the Younger, et. al. so I'll let those answers stand for mine.