A Certain Jesus, a certain man!

Just a quick response to a recent article by Chris Hansen, which won’t take long as it only needs a few issues to be clarified. Chris seems to have missed within my own article the actual reason for thinking the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) was originally negative. Chris does a fine job in showing tis does not have a negative connotation. I wish to show that none of her arguments actually argue against an original TF, nor do they prove that tis cannot have been part of this original TF.

 

These following points will show very quickly where Chrissy goes wrong:

1. Tis (‘certain’) was not used to show the TF as negative (by me). I gave a whole section in the paper explaining why the TF was originally negative.

2. Tis, not being negative does not rule it out from being in the original TF.

3. Most important: as tis is attested in two different variants of the TF and both from different transmission lines, this increases the likelihood of it being the original reading.

4. A summary dismissal of tis cannot be so easily dismissed as it is already attested in another variant.

5. The way Josephus uses tis and the way Christian scribes use tis are two different things, and it does not make my case worse that tis meant nothing to Christians.

 

Now to show you the bit Chrissy missed from my paper is the main reason why we should think the TF was originally negative and that this has nothing to do with the word tis. In a section in my paper which I call The Negative Original, I test the arguments for the neutral model and find they do not stand up to scrutiny.[1] Then I give the best reason for thinking this passage was originally negative as cited by Paget who gave a critical analysis of Norden:

Norden noted that the section running from Ant. 18.55-90 was united not by chronology—the two events reported after the TF, the expulsions of the Isis cult and of the Jews from Rome, concern events traditionally held to have taken place in ad 19 (Tacitus Annales 2.85), some time before Pilate’s tenure of office in Judaea. Rather they are united by the fact that they all conform to disturbances or θόρυβος (‘tumult’), that is disturbances of a particular kind (either the noun θόρυβος or the verb θορυβεῖν is found in the description of each incident). Such a bunching together of θόρυβος was, Norden noted, a well-known ancient historical ploy, and it is possible that Josephus had access to a source which characterized Pilate’s tenure of office as a succession of θόρυβοι (‘tumults’) … Norden appeared to exclude arguments that assumed some tampering with an originally more negative passage which would have fitted more easily into the ‘thorubic’ context he outlined … If one adopts the view entertained, amongst others, by Thackeray and Eisler, that in the original account of the TF the word θόρυβος did in fact appear. Such an observation would also serve to counter Norden.[2]

Schwartz also had same argument as explained in one of my papers:

Schwartz has observed that Josephus often kept disparate narratives and sources in unity, he did this by use of a leitmotif. Schwartz gave many examples of other leitmotifs but here is what he had to say of Pilates tenure: … of Josephus’s reports about the days of Pontius Pilate use verbs or nouns of the Greek root thoryb- thus characterizing the events as “tumults” (18.58, 18.62, 18.65, 18.85, 18.88). This creates a chapter with that theme, and as if to make sure it is noted Josephus begins the last of the episodes by introducing it as follows: “The Samaritan nation too was not free from tumult (thorybos)” (18.85). The use of this leitmotif both creates unity among materials that are quite diverse, including some that have nothing to do with Pilate and apparently come from what has been termed a Roman “scandal-chronicle”[3]

Of course, if the TF was not ex nihilo this argues that this word tumult must have been expunged from the original TF.

And now to show people how I use the tis argument in my latest paper without any suggestion of it being negative:

One word that is attested in the variants is the word tis (‘certain’). In Codex A of Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.11.7 quotes the TF and has tis after Iēsous referring to ‘a certain Jesus.’ This tis is the same reading as the Slavonic. ‘The Slavonic Josephus offers a trace of the same pronoun: the phrase muzi nekij retroverted into Greek would correspond to anēr tis (certain man). While this word tis made no difference to Christian scribes who use it for heroes or villains, it just so happens that Josephus often used this descriptive to say somebody was unimportant. A certain so and so. It was probably common knowledge in Justin Martyrs time that Josephus did in fact use tis. Justin Martyr can imagine how Trypho would caricature Jesus, writing Iēsous tinos (Dial. Trypho 108). Josephus used this descriptive for many of the Sign Prophets and messianic figures to show they were unimportant to the Jewish people and for propaganda reasons to show the Romans many were nothing but troublemakers. He had another ‘certain Jesus son of Saphot’ as head of a band of robbers. (War 3.450). This certain Jesus had a triumphant entery into Tiberias on up to fifty Roman horses (War 3.452). This phrase tis was also used for Judas the Galilean (War 2.118), Theudas (Ant. 20.97) and the unnamed prophet under Festus (Ant. 20.188). The original TF would also have described Jesus as a ‘certain man’.[4]

 

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[1] David Allen, “A Model Reconstruction of What Josephus would have really written about Jesus”, JGRChJ 18, (2022), pp.121-123.

[2] Eduard Norden, ‘Josephus und Tacitus über Jesus Christus und eine messianische Prophetie’, Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur 31 (1913), pp. 637-66. Cit. op. . Carleton Paget, ‘Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity’, JTS 52 (2001), pp. 579-580.

[3] Daniel R Schwartz, “Many Sources but a Single Author Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities”, in Chapman and Rodgers (eds) A Companion to Josephus, Oxford 2016, p.45. Taken from my paper- David Allen, “A Proposal: Three Layer Redactional Model For the Testimonium Flavianum”, RevBíb 85 1-2 (2023), p.222.

[4] David Allen, “How Josephus Really Viewed Jesus”, RevBíb 85 3-4, (2023), p.346.