Josephus and other contemporaries on Jesus

[Amarok]

 wouldn't assume it's about the money. Trust me I've read some of his blogs and the overwhelming majority of Christians would hate his views on Jesus, so I don't think he's trying to sell out to apologetics at all. I myself don't agree with his conclusions on a great many things. 

It's about his ego

[Minimalist]

Bart Eheram states that the crucifixion of Jesus on the orders of Pontious Pilate is the most certain element about him

And, ultimately when put to the test, his "evidence" for that belief is the fucking gospels.  Now, that would not be so bad if he had not made a career our of shitting all over those gospels for being mistake-prone, politically motivated, and heavily edited.

In effect, he has been shitting in a small pond called "gospels" for 25 years and then, when he suddenly decided to mend fences with the other side, he says "Hey guys, never mind the turds....I found a clean place to drink from!"

No thanks, Bart.  You first.

[The Grand Nudger]

That;s rich.  The crucifixion is the certain thing?  Put him down with nameless thousands so ended.  Meanwhile....wheres the man that made the fish and cured the blind and gave the sermons and chased out the priests and was born of a virgin who was visited by an angel in the desert in the dead of night?  

Who was that guy?

[Pat Mustard]

I believe he is arguing from the issue of embarrassment. That Jesus was crucified falls under this category, which could give its historical probability a bump.

That's a bullshit argument. By your reckoning we'd have to take the Cúchulainn mythos as true because "it would be too embarrassing a detail to include for a made up hero".

The crucifiction story fails for four reasons, 1) jewish law never proscribed crucifiction for their death penalty, they went for stoning or haning as it was humiliating under jewish culture to die those ways, 2) the jewish legal system shut down during passover therefore the trial and execution wouldn't have happend over the period described in the bible, 3) while Rome did crucify, they only used against those they deemed a threat to Rome. An obscure preacher telling people to pay taxes to Caesar wasn't a threat to Rome, especially in an area hostile to Roman rule, and 4) Rome very rarely stepped in to overrule local laws and judicial proceedings, except if they thought the empire's existence was endangered. Again letting the jews kill an obscure preacher in their own way and time was less troublesome than stepping in and overriding jewish law (first by trying to free Jesus, then by crucifying him).

When you look at the logic of the situation you realise the crucifiction story is a near impossibility.

[Mister Agenda]

Under Roman rule, it was illegal for the Jews to carry out executions themselves, so there's that.

[Drich]

One crucial point: someone who identified as Jewish, and wrote about “Judean Antiquities” would not have included those passages in the Testimonium Flaviam that allude to Jesus’ divinity. And if he was somehow secretly convinced of Jesus’ divinity, I highly doubt he would have been so off handed about mentioning it.

There are very strong indications that at least parts of the Testimonium Flaviam were fabricated after Josephus’ time.

Why would anyone mention a quelled uprising that ultimately lead to a gubernatorial power shift in the region which ultimately lead to the insurrection and destruction of the region? yes indeed that would be totally uncharastic for a historian to mention the events preceding the obliteration of jerusalem and the wholesale slaughter of it's people and culture.

[Rev. Rye]

One crucial point: someone who identified as Jewish, and wrote about “Judean Antiquities” would not have included those passages in the Testimonium Flaviam that allude to Jesus’ divinity. And if he was somehow secretly convinced of Jesus’ divinity, I highly doubt he would have been so off handed about mentioning it.

There are very strong indications that at least parts of the Testimonium Flaviam were fabricated after Josephus’ time.

Why would anyone mention a quelled uprising that ultimately lead to a gubernatorial power shift in the region which ultimately lead to the insurrection and destruction of the region? yes indeed that would be totally uncharastic for a historian to mention the events preceding the obliteration of jerusalem and the wholesale slaughter of it's people and culture.

No, the uncharacteristic thing is Josephus, a Jew, talking about Jesus AND taking reports of his divinity at face value.

[Drich]

The Bible commands "Jesus" to be referred to as Immanuel.  So Josephus is false since he does not mention an Immanuel.

Ah, no.

Josephus refers to Jesus as the messiah which is a title of Jesus in the bible. Messiah was what the Jews were looking for to physically deliver them from the Romans. Later a false messiah lead the jews to their destruction is what Josephus is leading up to.

[Minimalist]

The expected jewish moschiach was a great warrior.... not some wimpy little fuck who got himself killed.  Try again, asshole.

---

Correct. There have been no discoveries of 1st century manuscripts. In fact P-52 is, iirc, the oldest known manuscript we have. I know its 2nd century. The earliest date people initially gave it was 100 AD but that's been re-evaluated recently to 125-175 AD, which could put it closer to the 3rd century. I'm not contesting that point.

However; this does not mean that P-52 is the original of John.

A good point and worthy of further discussion.  Lots of assumptions made on that score.

I wanted to circle back to this before it gets lost in the shuffle.  Ehrman, as a proponent of historical criticism, has stated that he believes it is possible to get past all the scribal errors, doctrinal edits, and political changes to get back to the earliest copy which would then, by definition, be closest to the original.  That sounds logical and in terms of the assorted human fuck ups is probably true but so what?  Doubtless there are scribal errors and omissions and insertions into Homer as well and if you get back to the very earliest copy of Homer's Iliad you may have something closer to the original written tale but it remains a story of how the Olympian gods interfered with the lives of men for their own vanity.  It's a story.  I rather doubt there is a xtian who would grant that Apollo, Zeus, Poseidon and Hera are real because Homer wrote about them.

Yet, that is exactly what xtians.... and all theists with a book - don't want to let the muslims off scot free - ask us to believe.  Homer took tales which had probably existed for centuries and wrote them down.  The thing is, they existed as oral tales and oral tales change every time they are recited.  And there is the rub. 

Now, as to P-52 and the "original" of John goes, I maintain that it is less important when something was first written and more important as to when it was last edited.  Scholars have long known that Justin in his First Apology made reference to something called the memoirs of the apostles.  For just about as long they have known that the parts he cited do not match up to what passes for the canonical gospels of today.  This leads to a couple of possible conclusions:

1 - Justin was referring to another book(s) which did not survive.
2-  The book(s) Justin referred to were in the process of composition/editing in 160 and were not finalized and ready for Prime Time until Irenaeus c 185 came along and attached the names to them.
3-  Justin was as big a bullshitter as everyone else.

Ehrman and others are prepared to give the status of the authentic pauline epistles, another concept which requires a lot of thought but we'll ignore it for now, as being the earliest xtian writings.  They also admit that "paul" never knew anything about a historical jesus who lived shortly before his own time and who got his info straight from "god" as revelation.  In order to have "memoirs" of the apostles you first needed to invent "apostles."

[Drich]

Why would anyone mention a quelled uprising that ultimately lead to a gubernatorial power shift in the region which ultimately lead to the insurrection and destruction of the region? yes indeed that would be totally uncharastic for a historian to mention the events preceding the obliteration of jerusalem and the wholesale slaughter of it's people and culture.

No, the uncharacteristic thing is Josephus, a Jew, talking about Jesus AND taking reports of his divinity at face value.

    In 1995 a discovery was published that brought important new evidence to the debate over the Testimonium Flavianum. 
    For the first time it was pointed out that Josephus' description of Jesus showed an unusual similarity with another early description of Jesus. 
    It was established statistically that the similarity was too close to have appeared by chance. 
   Further study showed that Josephus' description was not derived from this other text, but rather that both were based on a Jewish-Christian "gospel" that has since been lost. 
    For the first time, it has become possible to prove that the Jesus account cannot have been a complete forgery and even to identify which parts were written by Josephus and which were added by a later interpolator. 
  Read about this discovery here! 
http://www.josephus.org/testimonium.htm

If you click on the link there is a lnk to the various chapter of a book studying what is purposed in the above summary.

Meaning they found another writing that copied the original josephus texts.