The earliest reference to Jesus’ death and why it happened was in a side note by Paul.

For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s assemblies in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those assemblies suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

1 Thess. 2.14-16

 

This passage was previously thought of as an interpolation but when you go into the actual arguments most were made for theological reasons. The proponents of interpolation had thought the passage was anti Judaic, but ‘the Jews who killed’ Christ were specific Jews, namely the collaborating High Priest who smoothed Roman rule along with the Prefect of Judea. Killing the prophets refers to prophet martyrdom also mentioned in Romans 11.3. These are all internal historic Judaic in-fighting that Paul uses to describe the now internal problems facing the Jesus assemblies. In the words of Simon J. Joseph:

The authenticity of this passage has been disputed, yet the allegedly anti-Judaic tone and content of 1 Thess 2:14–15 is fairly consonant with Pauline theology. In Romans, Paul writes that the Jews have been “broken off ” or “cut off ” from the tree of Abraham (“because of their unbelief”; Rom 11:20) and will not be grafted back until the future, when God’s “wrath” against them comes to an end (cf. Rom 11:11–29). Paul repeatedly appeals to the theme of God’s “wrath” in Romans (2:5, 8; 3:5; 4:15; 5:9; 9:22; 12:19). It seems safe to conclude that not only were some Jews involved in the death of Jesus, but we can be even more specific by identifying the high priest (and chief priests) as disliking him enough to form conspiratorial attempts to stop him, a dislike that ultimately led to a judicial action by the “Sanhedrin” and to Jesus being “handed over” to Pilate, who sentenced him to death. [1]

 

More recently other arguments were added for interpolation by Carrier when he applied the phrase “But wrath has come upon them at last!” to the Temple destruction. Yet this was a common retrospective fallacy, many historians can fall for such a fallacy as history is done backwards, yet life is lived forwards. The ‘wrath of God’ was a common expression of the Tanakh and could be applied to many catastrophes happening in Paul’s day. In the words of Robert Jewett:

Furthermore, Paul’s statement in I Thess. ii. 16, ‘but God’s wrath has come upon them at last’, may refer to the disturbance which occurred in Jerusalem during the Passover of 49 when twenty to thirty thousand Jews were supposed to have been killed. Cf. Josephus, Ant. 20.112 and War 2.224-7. Since this disturbance was instigated by Zealots (War 2.225), Paul could well have interpreted the massacre as punishment for the persecution against the Christians in Judea.[2]

And of course we could also add other possible disasters that Paul could have had in mind such as Judea suffering famine in 45-47 CE (Ant. 20:49-53). Another reason this passage is unlikely an interpolation is that it is in all the manuscripts and is included in Marcions (the first) New Testament. When we triangulate Paul’s epistles, the gospels and Josephus works, the picture becomes very clear the Jesus was executed by crucifixion (epistles) for being ‘King of the Jews’ (the Titulus crucis in the gospels and Jesus being referred as messiah in the epistles, that is a title signifying an anointed figure such as a king). Bart Ehrman shows that what the Christian sources claim, Jesus crucified under Pilate “accords perfectly well with what we know about the Roman administration of justice in first-century Palestine[3].”

Anyone who attracted crowds, especially the charismatics, messiah figures and of course the Sign Prophets were politically dangerous because they were a threat to Roman security. Ellis Rivkin said that Caiaphas would immediately silenced Jesus as he was “so ominous a threat to law and order” and Pilate would have “made short shrift of a case like this.” Jesus put himself in the firing line of  “Rome’s determination to eradicate anyone who challenged its rule.”.[4] Loveday Alexander observes “ It must be borne in mind that Josephus saw in Messianism as the cause of the 1st Jewish War and that he had personally tried to put a stop to this dangerous current in his eyes by calling Vespasian Messiah.”[5]

Messianism was a dirty word in the aftermath of the Great Jewish Revolt 66-70CE. Much suffering came “in the footsteps of the messiah” and is reflected in this Mishnah passage here: “In the footsteps of the messiah insolence (hutzpah) will increase and the cost of living will go up greatly” (Mishnah soter 9.5).

Yet messianism can be detected in Josephus as Novonsen cutely observes:

John Barclay comments on the Antiquities and Against Apion, “These works show us a Diaspora Jew making a supreme—and in fact the last extant—effort to interpret Judaism for non-Jews in the Graeco- Roman world.” This is the most compelling explanation for why Josephus calls the Jewish insurgents “diadem-wearers” and not “messiahs.” It is not, as de Jonge and Rajak suggest, that they were not messiahs. In all likelihood, at least some of them were, as Josephus implies in the passage about the “ambiguous oracle” that drove them to war. [War 6.5.4- the same passage that applied this same oracle to Vespasian]. Nor is it the case that, as Momigliano suggests, Josephus was blithely unaware of Jewish messianism; here again, Josephus gives us reason to think that he does know something about it. [Examples given in footnote 131 by Novenson:  War 6.312–13; Ant. 10.210; Ant. 17.43–45] Nor, finally, contra Feldman, does Josephus avoid the word “messiah” because he fears that using it would make him sound anti-Roman. On the contrary, Josephus presents himself as a reporter, not a partisan to the revolt, and he makes the insurgents’ anti-Romanness more clear, not less so, by rendering it in a Roman idiom. The explanation, rather, is that Josephus is constrained by literary convention, by his own chosen project of cultural translation from a Jewish idiom to a Roman one. He calls the insurgents “diadem-wearers” for the same reason that he calls the Pharisees “Stoics”: because that is the term by which his audience will understand what he means.[6]

We will finish off this blog with an extract from John Domic Crossan book Render Unto Caesar. Crossan shows how Josephus tries to sweep Jewish messianism under the mat.

 

“Finally, twenty years after his Romanizing of Jewish eschatology in his Jewish War, Josephus had to face the book of Daniel in his Jewish Antiquities. Although written in the 160s BCE, the book was fictionalized as if written in the 500s BCE and so all its “prophecies” were infallibly accurate (Ant. 10.188–281). But what about the parallel Jewish eschatological promises of the rule of God on earth in Daniel 2:44 and 7:14, 22, 27?

In Daniel 2 and 7, the imperial rules of the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, and Greeks were to be destroyed and, along with Alexander’s successor sub-empire of the Syrian-Greeks, to be replaced by the rule of God on earth. But how could Josephus record such Jewish eschatology, especially since “in the very same manner Daniel also wrote concerning the Roman government, and that our country should be made desolate by them” (Ant. 10.27b)

Watch how he handles Daniel’s Jewish eschatology in those two particular chapters, first with Daniel 2 and its dream vision of a Great Statue and the Great Stone […] having avoided mention of Judaism’s eschatological rule of God in Daniel 2:44, Josephus avoids it again by totally omitting all of Daniel 7. That omission is also quite obviously deliberate. Although Josephus copied the stories in Daniel 1–6 in their proper sequence (Ant. 10.188–218, 232–63), he then skipped Daniel 7 completely and picked up again with Daniel 8 (Ant. 10.269–76).

As Josephus describes the Jewish response to Romanization, his first negation is of any God-founded eschatological motivation for it or any God-decreed messianic expectation about it. For Josephus, Jewish eschatology was mistake at best, delusion at worst, because the climax of time, the end of history, the last or eschatological “rule of God” on earth was the rule of Rome itself. Any validity to a Jewish eschatological vision or a Jewish messianic hope was buried by Josephus in the charred wreckage of Jerusalem.[7]

 

This shows that Josephus (like most Jews badly affected by it) hated messianism. To him some of the less well known messianic figures that failed to get a mention in Josephus first book War, made it into his later book Antiquities. Even the minor figures that did make it into War, barely register a mention and are quickly moved over. Josephus preferred to talk about himself and made a good chunk of the book about his exploits as commander of the Galilean forces.

 

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[1] Simon J. Joseph, Jesus and the Temple, pp.22-23.

[2] Robert Jewett, The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation, 1971, New Testament Studies, 17(2), p. 205, fn. 5.

For Carriers arguments see Richard Carrier, ‘Pauline Interpolations’, Hitler Homer Bible Christ, The historical papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013, (Richmond, California: Philosopher Press 2014), pp. 203-211

Also see Matthew Jensen, The (In)authenticity of 1 Thessalonians 2.13-16: A Review of Argument, Currents in Biblical Research 18(1), (2019), pp. 59 –79.

[3] Bart Ehrman, Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene”, pp.222-223.

[4], Rivkin, What Crucified Jesus?, p.82

[5] Loveday Alexander, “The Gospel according to Celsus, Celsus’ Representation of Christianity” ch 8 in Celsus and his World, Paget and Gathercole (eds).

[6] Matthew V. Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users, (Oxford, 2017), p.147-8.

[7] John Dominic Crossan, Render Unto Caesar, ch 11

Even for the most skeptic Jesus minimalists, I find it is untenable to say there is no history in the gospels. We may not have the ability to parse out the history from the mythological, as most of the criteria we use have major faults. Even acknowledging this, there is evidence that even through the medium of a Greek education required to produce the gospels some evidence exists that the source of the material used by the gospels does in fact originate in the Aramaic world and could very well go back to Jesus.

Different traditions coming from different cultures:

As we can see here in the gospels some traditions came from the Jewish culture, some were from the Greaco-Roman. Here are five test cases-

1. ARAMAIC:

I think the jar maker was a picked up Aramaic tradition, one instance where I think an original Aramaic story was picked up is the following:

The episode of Jesus’ anointing at the lepra’s house, the question is, why is anybody there?

Biblical scholars have recognised Simon could not have had lepra at the time Jesus visited his home. So we have to look at some further explanation.

As seen from the following paper, Enter the house of Simon the Lepra, naird to anoint Jesus. Aramaic translated the word in place of lepra as “jar merchant”.

(The reason for this mistaken mistranslation is the ancient Aramaic has no vowel markings… The word for “Lepra” is gimel-resh-beyt-aleph or GRBA Pronounced as “gar-bah” which is the same spelling of the word for the word “Jar Maker” spelled GRBA but pronounced “gar-ah-bah”. So to recap Lepra = “ga-bah” and Jar Maker = “gar-ah-bah”!)

This gets rid of the oddity of going to the lepra’s house. This verse would make more sense as a Jar merchant. This could have been a story circulating about Jesus’ anointing, as he was declared a messiah by his followers?

http://www.tabernacleofdavidministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Aramaic-NT.pdf

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2. GREEK:

They say that the Eucharist comes from Seder yet no Jew ever would say “drink my blood”. The drinking blood looks like the rituals of Dionysus, blood of the grape, bread of the grain. This ritual fits better as being Judaized to a new Passover. (Robert M. Price)

As Piñero states, in The True Passion of Christ, P.132:

“Paul seeks his future conversations among those Gentiles most willing to accept Jewish ideas, that is, among pagan sympathisers with Judaism. And when among these, which the Acts of the Apostles call the “God fearers” (Acts 10, 2-22-35), they do not offer enough, he turns his eyes to other very religious pagans who sought in the beginnings of the “religions of mysteries” the possibilities of ensuring salvation and immortality. It is known that one of the rites that existed in these religions was to make visible communion with the destiny of divinity—a divinity that somehow suffers death or passion, but then returns to life also in some way—through the ingestion of something that symbolized that deity. Among the followers of the mysteries of Dionysus the ingestion was the flesh of a kid that symbolised the god, and among the mysteries of Atis a mixture of bread and liquid was ingested.”

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3. ARAMAIC

Semitisms are linguistic features within the Greek texts which are dissimilar and otherwise unused in the Greek language but common and well known in the Semitic languages and translations of Semitic texts such as the LXX.

Hebrew and Aramaic use particles or prepositions to indicate the case of a noun and its function in the phrase or sentence (unlike Greek which has an inflectional noun declension). So overuse of nouns and pronouns connected to possession, nominative and accusative case is extremely bizarre writing in Greek but normal in NW Semitic. Hebrew and Aramaic use particles or prepositions to indicate the case of a noun and its function in the phrase or sentence. (unlike Greek which has an inflectional noun declension), so overuse of nouns and pronouns connected to possession, nominative, and accusative case is extremely bizarre writing in Greek but normal in NW Semitic.

Redundancy of Nominal/Accusative/Genitive phrases
-συμπόσια συμπόσια: 2 times in Mark 6:39-42

Idiomatic Narrative Phrases

• ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν in Mark 6:37
• Ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις in Mark 8:1
• ἔκλασεν καὶ ἐδίδου in Mark 8:6
• This would mean that there was a previous text or saying which would have been translated from a Semitic language into Greek.

To make a comparison, let’s take the Irish in America – we refer to them as “plastic paddies”, they try to be Irish but they are different. They have a few words (cupla focail) of Irish but they can’t speak it (gospel markings are similar, a few words of Aramaic and that’s it. They know the Irish background and know that the British starved us to death in a major famine of 1845-50, just as the Jewish diaspora of a couple of generations ago knew about the destruction of the Temple. Lots of modern analogies. They are the comparisons in which the gospels were produced through the Roman book culture.

4. GREEK:

(From Bart Ehrman)

John, 3:1-21, Jesus says to Nicodemus “You must be born again.” The Greek word translated “again” actually has two meanings: it can mean not only “a second time” but also “from above.” Whenever it is used elsewhere in John, it means “from above” (John 19:11, 23). That is what Jesus appears to mean in John 3 when he speaks with Nicodemus: a person must be born from above in order to have eternal life in heaven above. Nicodemus misunderstands, though, and thinks Jesus intends the other meaning of the word, that he has to be born a second time. “How can I crawl back into my mother’s womb?” he asks, out of some frustration. Jesus corrects him: he is not talking about a second physical birth, but a heavenly birth, from above.

The Greek double entendre makes little sense in Aramaic and therefore not historical. This is a double entendre that works only in Greek.

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5. ARAMAIC

Some Greek sayings of Jesus make better sense in Aramaic as in the case of the Sabbath saying found in Mark:

“Then he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)

Here Bart explains this best:

Jesus informs his Jewish opponents, “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” When you look at that saying closely and try to figure it out, in fact it doesn’t actually make sense. What is the “Therefore” there for? Why does the fact that Sabbath was created for the benefit of humans, not humans for the benefit of the Sabbath make the Son of man (Jesus) the Lord of the Sabbath? The saying does make sense when put back into Aramaic, however. That’s because “man” and “son of man” are the same term in Aramaic; bar enash. And so what Jesus said was “Sabbath was made for bar enash, not bar enash for the Sabbath. Therefore bar enash is lord even of the Sabbath.” Now the saying makes perfect sense. Humans are lords of the Sabbath, not the other way around. Human need takes priority over the commandment not to work on the Sabbath.

Taken from Bart Ehrman blog: https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-teaching-in-aramaic-and-the-books-of-the-canon-mailbag-february-24-2017/

This shows that some material used by the gospels were picked up from sayings originally circulating in Aramaic-speaking Palestine.

CONCLUSION:

Bultmann envisages the Jesus tradition as ‘a series of layers’, Hellenistic and Greek, Palestinian and Aramaic, within which again ‘different layers can be distinguished’. (Dunn, Jesus Remembered, page 76).

In conclusion some of the Aramaic traditions picked up shows that oral tradition did have some affect on the composition of the gospels.

Much of the Jewish content were tanakh allusions. The gospels are soaking with Tanakh allusions. Yet we find these allusions were trying to say something of a historical figure. Taking the example of the messiah concept, in the Tanakh context, the messiah had always been a historical figure. Messiah is a human figure, one who will have children and perform a sacrifice for himself. The Messiah will do sacrifices for his own ‘accidental sins’ as seen in Ezekial 45:22: “And upon that day shall the prince prepare for himself and for all the people of the land a bullock for a sin-offering.” (Cf Leviticus 4). The Messiah will have children as seen in Ezekial 46:16: “Thus saith the Lord GOD: If the prince give a gift unto any of his sons, it is his inheritance, it shall belong to his sons; it is their possession by inheritance.”

There were random verses picked to show Jesus fulfilling messianic expectations. Not the best ones such as mentioned above were picked. This suggests that those that did not fit the historic Jesus could not be used. It looks like whatever traditions there were about Jesus, they picked the Hebrew scripture that could go along with it.

We do know there was oral tradition as there were missionaries, and more than just Paul as attested in his letters. Good case for oral tradition is the following:

-Paul mentioned other missionaries.

-Therefore there were active missionaries in the Jesus movement.

-What they preach and had to explain- is the oral tradition.

-These oral traditions influence what scriptures were used to tell Jesus’ story.

-The gospels making use of the letters of Paul would inherit any oral tradition encased in Paul’s letters, one example would be the ‘divorce saying’ Paul’s quotes Jesus as saying.

While the content of the gospels include Jewish material, the framework is definitely Greco Roman as David Aune said. [1] Much exciting scholarship on the Greco-Roman framework is done in this area by the likes of Dr Robert Miller (comparing the gospels to translation fables, the purpose of the writings was to apotheosise the adherent) [2], Litwa (who shows similar linguistics used by other Greek literature such as the virgin concept),[3] Robyn Walsh (who shows the gospels did in fact come out of Roman book culture)[4] MacDonald (who shows memises with other Greek literature)[5]. So within this Greco-Roman framework we have some material of historical interest and some of that material did not even have a Tanakh allusion to match. We find the crucifixion does not have any allusions. This implies more of an apologetic for what really happened rather than a symbolic meaning which is not found, “and could thus not have been prompted by a desire to bring the record of Jesus’ last hours into accord with divine prediction”. [6] While we do have much historical fiction in the retelling of the execution of Jesus, the evangelists were aware of the historical crucifixion of their hero and wrote an apotheosis to match.

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[1] David Aune, Greco-Roman Literature and The New Testament, Westminster Press, 1987.

[2] Richard Miller, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, Routledge, 2015.

[3] see David M Latwa, Ieuses Deus, ch2.

[4] Robyn Faith Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, Cambridge, 2021.

[5] Dennis MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Yale, 2010.

[6] A. Fitzmeyer, The Gospel According to Luke I–IX (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 773.

It’s no conspiracy among academics why 99% of scholars know Paul was on about a recently deceased executed person. Anyone who knows anything about this time period, 1st century CE, and the worldview (apocalypticism) of the Jewish missionaries that started a movement in the diaspora know from the language and idioms of Paul that he is talking about a historical person recently deceased.

Paul’s letters assumed Jesus existed when read through 1st century Jewish apocalypticism. To second Temple Jews only actual people resurrect, Paul constantly proclaims that Jesus has resurrected, that point alone cannot be got around by any mythicists. This brings Jesus existence up to 99% probability, 1% doubt is only if Paul’s letters are made up which is also unlikely. (They are too messy)!

Paul’s pretty explicit that Jesus was human and in second Temple terms understands “resurrection of the flesh.” —

“For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:21-22)

In Jewish reckoning at the time, resurrection can only happen to actual people and Earth is where humans are – they’re literally made out of material from the Earth (as Paul understands as well – see 1 Cor. 15:46-49). This is a problem for mythicism.

Anyway let us go through some other indicators that Jesus was historical:

Paul already referred to Jesus as in the flesh so he clearly has placed Jesus on earth. The phrase “Kata Sarka” (according to the flesh) in 2 Cor. 5:16 cannot refer to an otherwordly existence. In the context of the letter: Paul uses spiritual and fleshy people to mean spiritual and unspiritual. “Those interpreters who followed Baur in regard to the theological centre of Paul were convinced that Paul’s language about the Spirit and its antithesis—the flesh—came from the Greek world of thought.” [1] Unspiritual cannot be applied to Jesus when Paul describes him “according to the flesh” in the context of this verse, so it can only have one meaning: that of when Jesus was alive.

Paul, also sees Jesus was believed to be of Davidic descent according to the flesh (σαρξ).

the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from the seed of David according to the flesh

περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυεὶδ / Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα

Rom. 1:3

I don’t accept 1 Thess. 2.14-15 as an interpolation as that was only argued as an interpolation on theological grounds. Here is a footnote in one of my papers:

Most of the arguments proposed for interpolation were done on theological grounds. Most of Carrier’s analyses are only applicable to the passage when “But wrath has come upon them at last!” is applied to the Temple destruction. See Richard Carrier, ‘Pauline Interpolations’, Hitler Homer Bible Christ, The historical papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013, (Richmond, California: Philosopher Press 2014), pp. 203-211; Yet that is only a retrospective fallacy as Jewett has shown many local catastrophes, “Furthermore, Paul’s statement in I Thess. ii. 16, ‘but God’s wrath has come upon them at last’, may refer to the disturbance which occurred in Jerusalem during the Passover of 49 when twenty to thirty thousand Jews were supposed to have been killed. Cf. Josephus, Ant. 20.112 and War 2.224-7. Since this disturbance was instigated by Zealots (War 2.225), Paul could well have interpreted the massacre as punishment for the persecution against the Christians in Judea.” Quote from Robert Jewett, The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation, 1971, New Testament Studies, 17(2), p. 205, fn. 5. This is not the only disaster as Judea also suffered famine in 45-47 CE (Ant. 20:49-53). For a full set of the arguments see Matthew Jensen, The (In)authenticity of 1 Thessalonians 2.13-16: A Review of Argument, Currents in Biblical Research 18(1), (2019), pp. 59 –79. [2] So here we have Paul talking about Jesus on earth in the recent past.

So mythicists say that Paul referring to Jesus as a human is acceptable to mythicism (which is fair enough all you have to do is think of Dionysus in the play the Bacchae). But the point I’m making is – that to apocalyptic Jews people resurrecting is inconsistent to mythicism. Jesus being resurrected clearly means Paul is talking about a recently dead person.

To apocalyptic Jews only actual people resurrect, you cannot get around this with any second temple evidence, the only way you can get around this is by making stuff up.

As this post hinges on Paul’s letters being Apocalyptic, let’s show you just how apocalyptic they really are!

We have another set of literature that’s apocalyptic and that is the Dead Sea scrolls.
Let’s do a comparison,
Why the DSS were so valuable is that they give a cross section of a diverse amount of Jewish sects that existed just before the first century CE.
Pauls epistles were based on a now obsolete belief system where Satan is in control of this age right now. The same can be seen in the DSS, but this prince of darkness was known as Belial. Belial is mentioned many times in the Scrolls; Rules of the Community (Manual of Discipline) (3 times) the War Scroll (9), the Thanksgiving Hymns (4), the Psalms and Psalms Pesher (2), and some other miscellaneous texts (7). Paul refers to Satan as Belial in 2 Cor 6:15. Paul’s epistles are primarily concerned with the overthrow of bad angels. Everything that is going bad out in the real world would be Satan/Belials fault.
In both the epistles and DSS there are also good angels who fight the bad spirits. God will send a messiah who is going to join humans on earth on the last days (eschatological mindset where god will bring in the kingdom of god right here on earth in the last days). In both the epistles and some scrolls the messiah is going to be of “the seed of David” ie somebody descended from the line of David. (4Q174 III: 1-9 and Romans1:3; Cf Jeremiah 23:5; b.Talmud Rosh Hashanah 25a; Eusebius,EH 3.19; 3.20.1-6).
Another apocalyptic idea is that humans were buried and would rise on the last days and they can also have eternal life. Some will be raised in eternal life and in Daniel it says others will be condemned and held in contempt. There will be sin and atonement made for sin.
Some passages in Pauls epistles are better understood with what we know about apocalyptic Jews as revealed in the DSS.
Here we will examine some examples

• Galatians 4:4 “Born of a woman”. Apocalyptic Jews used this phrase “born of a woman” to say that somebody was a human. The scroll 4Q264 addresses God writing “man among your glorious works as why he can be born of a woman”. Another example 1 QS (Community Rule) 11.21 – it says man is “one born of woman… shaped from dust has he been”.
  The phrase always refers to actual people and not celestial people.

• Romans 9:5 where Jesus is the messiah, “whose are the fathers, and of whom is the Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed to the ages.” Jesus being the ‘messiah (Christos) according to the flesh’ would be a term used by apocalyptic Jews to refer to human figures. The title messiah was becoming otherworldly at this time, an expectant end times judgment figure. The difference with the letters is that to Paul Jesus was a ‘realized messiah’ as opposed to an ‘expectant messiah.’ Paul sees Jesus as a realized messiah is the fact he thinks the new age has started. A realised messiah will usher in the new age, establish a new kingdom of god right here on earth. Jesus is the ‘first fruits’ of this new started age (1 Cor. 15:20). All realized messiahs were human figures.

• Romans1:3 “seed of David”; Romans 15:12 “the root of Jesse” (King David’s father):
  The primary focus of ancient Judaism is the restoration of the Davidic line. 4Q174 III 1-9 is a Midrash on 2 Samuel 7:10-14 (and the use of Exodus15:17-18, Amos9:11) for the restoration of Davids house (dynasty). The branch of David is going to rise as somebody in Zion (Jerusalem) as an interpreter of the law. This branch is going to be the righteous messiah.
  Like other apocalyptic Jews, early Christians thought that Jesus was the messiah that came from the branch of David.
  Jews went to these two verses in the Hebrew Scriptures to say that the messiah would come from the branch of David:
  
  “bless the house of your servant, that it may be in your presence forever—since you, Lord GOD, have promised, and by your blessing the house of your servant shall be blessed forever.” (2 Samuel 7:29)
  
  “For this is what the LORD says: ‘David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of Israel..” (Jeremiah 33:17) All messianic movements claimed their line from King David. (We know this from the Dead Sea Scrolls, 4Q174 III: 1-9; Pauls epistles, Romans1:3; Cf Jeremiah 23:5; b.Talmud Rosh Hashanah 25a) All messianic movements claimed their line from King David. (We know this from the Dead Sea Scrolls, 4Q174 III: 1-9; Pauls epistles, Romans1:3; Cf Jeremiah 23:5; b.Talmud Rosh Hashanah 25a)
• 2 Cor. 6:15 in this verse Paul refers to Satan as Beliar, “What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?” Paul also refers to “Satan” or “Belial/Beliar” as one who tempts and deceives (1 Cor 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11). [3] In
  1 Thess 3:5 Satan is called “the tempter.” Paul sees Belial as in charge of the current dark age, whereas the new light age initiated by Christ has started, and this new age of lightness is headed by Christ, this is where Paul’s believers belong. Belial is also seen as in charge of the current age in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The opening of the War Scroll has “The first attack of the Sons of Light shall be undertaken against the forces of the Sons of Darkness, the army of Belial” (1QM I1).

• Philippians 2:8 that Jesus died on a Stauros.
  Josephus uses this term Stauros to tell of Romans crucifying Jews.
• 1 Cor. 15:4 “buried.”
  To be buried after crucifixion was a first century practice.
  Resurrected Jesus was the “first fruits of those who have died” (1 Cor 15:20-23):
  Following this Paul says Jesus was raised and that the other apostles had seen him. Paul and the other apostles all previously believed that Jesus had been alive, for according to apocalyptic Jews (especially seen in the book of Daniel), you had to be a living person before you could be resurrected. They all interpreted these sightings of Jesus in light of the apocalyptic idea of Resurrection. This mindset involved the idea of the dead being buried in the ground, in the earth and being raised again, literally in history on the last day of earth.
  “2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (KJV Daniel 12:2)
• Romans 16:25-26 (NIV)
  “25 Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith“
  In the scroll Commentary on Habukkah “God revealed the mysteries of the scriptures, the servants prophets to the Teacher of Righteousness”. (These arguments using the DSS were made by Dr. Winchester in his debate with Carrier [4])

In line with apocalypticism Paul has a “firm belief that he lived and worked in history’s final hour is absolutely foundational, shaping everything else that Paul says and does… asserting the nearness of the End: “You know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to awake from sleep. Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand” (Rom 13.11–12).” [5].

Paul refers to several events which are hard to explain on mythicism: brother in Gal 1:9; he is a descendant of David in Rom 1:3 and Jesse in Romans 15:12-13, he is born under the law Gal 4:4; belonging to the race of Abraham (Gal 3:16; Rom 9:5) exercising a ministry to Israel in fulfillment of the promises to the patriarchs (Rom 15:8), being crucified on a cross (passim Paul’s letters) and then 1 Thess 2:14-16 which says that Christians were being persecuted by the same men who killed Christ, and the only mythicist explanation for this is to propose a conjectural emendation with no real evidence.

Paul keeps referencing people who knew Jesus. These same people started checking up on Paul. Paul is under a great deal of stress for not meeting the figure of Jesus. He is challenged about his credentials. He knows the people who have met Jesus, Peter, James, his brothers. If Jesus was mythological, none of that anxiety would have existed. None of the bravado that he was better than those who knew Jesus. He would not have had to prove himself a better Apostle than those that knew Jesus. His great big battle is with those that knew Jesus in the flesh, and he stresses, “hey I’m not inferior to all of you”. Paul was fighting for credibility, by claiming his Jesus was different from the Jesus that was alive and crucified. (These arguments were made by Goodacre in a debate with Carrier [6]). As Paul describes a group of contemporary Jesus believers as if they were historical – on earth and contemporary – and later on they appear to deeply annoy him. They cannot therefore be symbolic inventions. On this basis Paul is reporting on people who knew Jesus.

“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? 2 Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 9:1-2)

He was jealous of those who had met and seen Jesus. Therefore he was trying to be better than James and co, explaining that Jesus personally appeared to him. That that was a different Jesus from when he was alive. (2 Cor.11:4).

These same men are claiming that Paul’s authority is suspect. In response, Paul has pointed out how he obtained his understanding of the gospel directly from Christ, (Paul was having visions of the recently dead Jesus) and that he was in total agreement with the other apostles. According to Paul the three most influential leaders, James, Cephas (this name means “rocky” in modern English, the Greek for “Rocky” would be Petros from which we get Peter) and John, saw the grace given to Paul by God to carry out his ministry (Gal. 1:15).

Paul speaks of the community once as having known Jesus “according to the flesh”, but that it is now something they need to move on from. So if Peter, James and John are “pillars” of the movement, it stands to reason that they knew Jesus “according to the flesh”:

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we regarded Christ according to the flesh, we know him no longer in that way.” (2 Cor. 5:16)

We also get plenty of hints about the historical Jesus from Justin and others. For instance, Justin specifically refers to Jesus being executed by Pilate. These hints are continued in the earlier form of the Testimonium Flavianum and Tacitus Annuls.

Marcion also thought Jesus appeared in history as well, he had an entire gospel. It should be noted that Marcion also retained 1 Thess 2:14-16 as well. (A sign against interpolation).

So overall, there is just no reason to accept the idea that Paul thought Jesus was an exclusively revelatory figure.

[1] Ann Jervis, “Paul the Theologian” in Pauline Studies, eds Novonsen and Matlock, Oxford 2022, p. 81

[2] David Allen, A Model Reconstruction of What Josephus would have Realistically Written About Jesus. JGRChJ 18 (2022), Page 138, Footnote 76.

[3] Jörg Frey, Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation, p.322

[4] Dr Winchester use of the DSS in defence of the historicity of Jesus was outstanding.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1038530526485151/permalink/1058276467843890/

[5] Paula Fredriksen, Paul, The Pagan’s Apostle, (Yale, 2017), Preface.

[6] see Goodacre debate Carrier here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EulhS8EkJk

Most messianic groups collapsed in the aftermath of the execution of their leader, the spell the sign prophet put his incredulous followers under would be broken when neither sign nor Gods intervention was realized. Belief in resurrection is not enough to explain the survival of this movement, eschatological belief in resurrection was common in second temple Judaism, (cf. Dan 12, 4Q521) to outsiders of the group, it would be scoffed at. There were two crucial factors in conjunction with belief of the resurrection that helped the survival of the Jesus movement. The first was Jesus’ brother James was there to carry on the movement and the second was they decided to head the movement from Jerusalem. While most messianic groups collapsed after the execution of their leader, the survival of the Jesus movement was that there was a brother who survived and was there to carry the movement forward. This helped the survival of the Jesus movement in the aftermath of his execution. James was in charge of the movement as evidenced from Paul (Gal. 2.12). That and the fact they stationed in a very central city for Judaism, Jerusalem. This helped when diaspora Jews became interested in a few eschatological missionary letters sent by Paul. Using a common second temple concept of resurrection of the dead gave hope that Jesus would come back (in fact it was understood that Jesus would come back as an eschatological saviour figure). We have an abundance of Second Temple Jewish texts that reflect these hopes:

 

As for Second Temple Jewish texts in which a divinely appointed human being rules as the eschatological king, they are just as numerous. Indeed, we have here an embarrassment of riches, for every passage that awaits a Davidic Messiah is expecting the eschatological advent of a royal human figure. 4Q174 1:11–13 cites 2 Sam 7:11–14, which is about King David’s heir, and applies it to the “Shoot of David,” who will arrive “at the end of days.” CD-A 7:15–21 interprets Num 24:17 (“A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel”) with reference to “the prince of the congregation,” an eschatological figure for the Qumran sectarians. 4Q252 5:1–4, in interpreting Gen 49:10 (“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and the obedience of the peoples is his”), looks forward to the “Messiah of righteousness, the Shoot of David,” who has “the covenant of kingship.” Psalms of Solomon 17:32 foretells the coming of “the Lord Messiah,” who will be “a righteous king.” And so it goes. Jesus’ Jewish world was quite familiar with the idea of a human being serving as eschatological king and/or judge.[1]

As people questioned me in the Facebook groups- “Why do you think “Jesus” was singled out and given a resurrection story and a new definition of messianism as opposed to the other sign prophets?” (Carl Reyer).

My answer- “I think the others were given all that too, but it was due to the likes of Marcion (massive shipping magnate) or Valentinus (hugely popular teacher in Alexander) picking up Paul’s letters that put Jesus into the big time. Other movements that tried to survive using second temple theology is evidenced in the messiah stone (possibly connected to Simon of Perea) and the DSS etc… This one being remembered is purely a historical chance that Paul’s letters were picked up by a rich ship merchant (Marcion) which enabled this movement to spread.”

Just like Ezekiel, a failed prophecy was applied to Jesus- but it was too strongly attributed to leave out. In the book of Ezekiel there was an attempt to upgrade his failed prophecy that Tyre would fall by Nebuchadnezzar, by re-explaining it that he would get his booty from Egypt instead. In the Synoptics they tried to explain it away as a false prophecy put on the lips of his enemies.

Of course a prophecy seemingly coming true put on the lips of Jesus in the gospel of John, whether applied ex eventu or not, put his fame ahead of any of the other sign prophets. Of any oral tradition that existed it is a prophecy circulating that is remembered most.

We know most messianic movements eventually died out in the aftermath of their leader executed- something different happened with Christianity, the gentiles didn’t really care about the Jewish messiah concept, therefore Christianity thrived among Paul’s converts. Christianity eventually died out among the likes of the ebionotes (who found it harder to convert their fellow Jews) etc.

---

[1] Allison, Constructing Jesus, p.252-3

“The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.” ~ Gospel of John 10:33

This quote from the gospel of John is a later interpretation of a man whom the evangelist thinks that Jesus had claimed to be a god. Many titles were thrown at Jesus, as a result of the messiah mythology already in existence.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

As you peel back the layers to earlier traditions contained in the other gospels, Jesus was not thought of as god at all. As a verse in Matthew 9:8 demonstrates, “When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.” Jesus was seen as one of the men God gave authority to. Another verse where Jesus did not view himself as god is in Mark 10:17-18, “As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Why do you call me good?’Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.’”

One such title that was often applied to many messianic figures from first century Judea was ‘King Messiah’ or anointed King, (in Greek, χριστὸς βασιλεύς). This is what Jesus is accused of in Luke 23:2 (where it is part of a noun phrase ending in εἶναι to be) – and thus has Jesus claiming himself to be an anointed king, (a ‘messiah’ King). The gospels make many claims in hindsight, but the reality is that many a charismatic figure gathering a crowd would be declared a king. As Josephus said (a historian of first century Judea):

 “And now Judea was full of robberies. And as the several companies of the seditious light upon any one to head them, he was created a King immediately, in order to do mischief to the publick.” ( Ant. 17.10.8).

This ‘king messiah’ was an expected figure from Jewish scripture, who would establish with God’s help, a “kingdom of god” right here on earth. He would restore Israel from foreign rulers after being imbued with the scriptures, “at the end of days”,(this is an eschatological concept which in Greek literally means ‘end of days’). This is typical of an apocalyptic Jew and since the time of Schweitzer Jesus was thought of as an apocalyptic prophet. [1] Dale Allison using his re-occurrence theme, (i. e. the concepts that keep getting mentioned in the gospels) demonstrates in favour of an apocalyptic prophet [2] Bart Ehrman says all the earliest sources and Jesus’ sayings point to him being an apocalyptic prophet. [3] As Jesus is acclaimed to have said:

“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”, (Mark 9:1), 

This shows that this new kingdom was imminent. These are the typical sayings of an apocalyptic prophet (apocalypse is Greek for revelation) and many downtrodden peasants would rally around such a figure as all other hope is exhausted. A quote from Josephus demonstrates this nicely:

 “in adversity man is quickly persuaded; but when the deceiver actually pictures release from prevailing horrors, then the sufferer wholly abandons himself to expectation” (Josephus, War 6.286)

Within the scriptures were many inspiring verses that would rally many of the downtrodden around a messianic figure, a rallying call such as:

 “The spirit of the lord yahweh is upon me because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor he has sent me to heal the broken-hearted to proclaim to the captives liberty and to [those who are] bound the opening of the prisons.” (Isaiah 61:1). 

Many such charismatic figures appeared on the scene of the Roman province of Iudaea before and after Biblical New Testament times, some willing to lead, others not so willing to lead the crowds. They offered deliverance from the harsh conditions imposed on the lower class by the ruling class. Apocalyptic Jews were even more dangerous as they thought the end of the world was approaching, they could abandon their way of life and become revolutionaries. This is reflected in Mark 1:17-20 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.” Or in Luke 9:52 it is even more amplified, “Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” As Adolf Harnack said, these were similar to “a military oath of allegiance” and all these sayings were torn from their real historical context [4]. The people were hoping for a liberator as seen in the Emmaus narrative in Luke 24:21 where it was expressed after Jesus’s death, “but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to liberate Israel.” Everything was wrong in the life of peasants in Jesus’s day, they were oppressed, overtaxed and over burdened. They worked hard and could not feed their families. The kingdom of god that was promised by messianic figures was going to fix everything with gods intervention. That is why the gospels are the opposite of the background they were set in, they were describing a kingdom of god that Jesus was ushering in. A land of milk and honey where everybody gets healed and fed. There are clues left in the gospels of the real background, the one full of trouble and revolts, such as reported by Josephus. The background atmosphere you could cut with a knife. Not only downplayed by the gospels but even downplayed by translations, one downplaying is held in Matthew 4:12 where Jesus retreats to Galilee as a safe haven. As Bruce Chilton writes, “Many translations water down the meaning of anakhoreo in Matthew’s Greek, giving us “he withdrew.” That is because they ignore the fraught political context that the execution of John by Herod Antipas produced for all John’s disciples.” [5]

“the kingdom of the heavens is taken by violence, and the violent claim it” (Matt. 11:12).

By the time of biblical literature being written, Jesus, being one of those figures was thought of as a God. We will explore this fascinating topic in the blog here.

In fact Jesus is so buried and behind the pious stained glass window that mythicism seems at first likely, but then after you keep researching and digging you begin to ask yourself questions such as: why try to cover up crucifixion? Why try and downgrade and attempt to write out James (the movement’s successor) out of the NT? Actions that they need not have used or done if written by fiction writers. Why call him the messiah? A title that was not needed for this hero if the story was made up from scratch. If a messiah was crucified, well then he obviously wasn’t the messiah. As God had failed to intervene, the belief was shattered. Most other messianic movements fell away after the death of their leader. There were a few exceptions where the movement tried to get around the fact that God did not intervene and thereby proving that the leader was after all the messiah. Many similar movements from the time met with little success, (one example was the Messiah Stone) until we had Paul and his success with the Jesus movements. In order for the Jesus movements not to collapse Paul had to come up with some special propaganda to get over the crucified messiah title.

I majored in Irish history, here the influence of Jesus, ironically on the Irish rebels of 1916, eventually caused the breakaway of the Irish Free State. Padraig Pearse was the spiritual leader of the rebellion, exalted among his peers because of his education. Padraig Pearse was a schoolteacher (the start of his exaltation) and revered. He believed in blood sacrifice for the Irish rebellion – dying to save Ireland, emulating Jesus who died to save everybody (or so Paul says). As Pearse wrote, “the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.“ [6] A later interpretation of Jesus insisting “that his followers should “take up their cross” and follow him (Mark 8:34–38)….for early Christians this was an unambiguous call to martyrdom.” [7] This rebellion failed but eventually took over the minds and hearts of the Irish people to such an extent that Sinn Fein almost won every parliament seat in Ireland in 1919. Soon after the war of independence started.

The Rebel

I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow;

Who have no treasure but hope,

No riches laid up but a memory of an ancient glory,

My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,

I am of the blood of serfs;

The children with whom I have played, the men and women with whom I have eaten

Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,

and though gentle, have served churls.

The hands that have touched mine,

the dear hands whose touch is familiar to me,

Have worn shameful manacles, have been bitten at the wrist by manacles,

have grown hard with the manacles and the task-work of strangers.

I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly, I am bone of their bone I that have never submitted;

I that have a soul greater than the souls of my people’s masters,

I that have vision and prophecy, and the gift of fiery speech…

And because I am of the people, I understand the people,

I am sorrowful with their sorrow, I am hungry with their desire;

Extract of The Rebel by Pádraig Pearse 1915

Thousands of Jews were crucified by the Romans in the aftermath of the Roman Jewish war, it took the victims days to die, the horror of this method was to act as a deterrent to rebelling Jews. Yet of all the victims, we have only one from archaeology in first century Judea and this was due to the fact that they could not remove the nail from his ankle. Thus lies the problem of the nature of evidence for over 2000 years ago. The literary evidence is highly theologised and sanitised as any man would never be good enough to be called god, thus all evidence is tampered with, some even caught red handed by textual critics. (A good starting book discussing textual criticism would be Bart Ehrmans, “Misquoting Jesus”). [8] Most messianic figures would be recorded in the memories of those that knew them. In the case of Jesus, (as in the case of other messianic figures such as the one the Messianic Stone was on about), the memories are contaminated with exalted language from the very beginning. Many only saw Jesus through the lens of resurrection, making the historian’s task all that harder. We can see that this happened from the earliest of times by the pre Pauline traditions that Paul incorporated into his epistles. So we see the earliest stratum of NT literature is contaminated with theological concepts. By reading comparative texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls will all help us interpret Paul’s epistles. Both the authors of the Scrolls and the epistles were written by apocalyptic Jews. The gospels provide how Christians wished to view Jesus. By studying the works of Josephus, we will be able to form a clearer picture of what was happening on the ground. Given the state of the evidence for the existence of Jesus, we may be forgiven for questioning if he ever existed. But if we look more carefully into what we know about apocalyptic Jews in first-century Palestine, you will get a clearer picture and show you the indicators that the existence of Jesus best explains the literature of the genuine epistles of Paul. Pauls epistles show a name on an ancient piece of literature from an apocalyptic cult of Jews. If you compare Pauls epistles to a comparative set of apocalyptic Jews such as those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you will see the indicators are that they were talking about a historical person. Bart Ehrman is one of the latest scholars to accept Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew, by use of multiple attestation he has shown the apocalyptic sayings go back to the historical Jesus. [9] Being an apocalyptic Jew made this messianic figure like a loaded gun. “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom”. (Matt16:28). What was there to lose with Gods intervention. Of course the gospel of Matthew had to put in a redefinition as miraculous help did not help this minor sign prophet, just as God did not intervene with all the other sign prophets, it puts into the mouth of Jesus – “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53). The early followers of Jesus being apocalyptic Jews is also reflected in Pauls epistles. Take this with all the polemics, politics and parodies contained in the gospels and it will show a high probability of a historical core to all the myths found in the NT. The cover-ups also indicate a historical person. The cover ups such as:

• the crucifixion, an execution only carried out for going against the Roman Empire. The blasphemy charge is a cover up for this.

• the cover up of being the messiah, as a crucified messiah makes no sense. “Anyone hung on a tree [that is, crucified] is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23).

•Gospel of Matthew goes out of his way to say Jesus fulfilled (pléróō, πληρόω) all the requirements of messiah, obvious propaganda as he did not. (The Messiah was supposed to restore God’s Kingdom right here on Earth, by the time Matthew was writing, the opposite had happened. The Temple (God’s house) was obliterated by the Romans in 70CE).

•The cover up such as Jesus being from Nazareth instead of being a Nazorean.

.•The polemics against James, attempts by the gospels and Acts to write him out, yet he was the succeeding leader.

Plus the fact that a messiah was a military figure going to usher in a new kingdom (only way to do that is violence).

Matthew 11:12 “the kingdom of the heavens does suffer violence, and violent men do take it by force.”

You get the impression they are covering up a historical person. I’ve become convinced by historicity. It’s the cover ups that convinced me. The cover ups of a messianic movement. The changes that came about to concepts because the movement moved from one culture to another all helped to cover up the truth. The deification concept came from the cross culture of syncretic concepts. The Greeks took the ‘son of god’ literally, to the Jews it was figurative.

Their leader got crucified, the movement couldn’t hack it and had to explain it theologically. Paul rose up in this organisation because he was a total genius at explaining it and changing it (with some concepts from the mystery religions). Nobody could make sense of the crucifixion like Paul could.

A crucified person could not be the Messiah as God did not intervene to help him. In Paul’s mind he used Deuteronomy 21:23 “Anyone hung on a tree [that is, crucified] is under God’s curse”. To the Jews he would not be cursed for being crucified as many Pharisees (Paul claimed to be a Pharisee) would have been crucified under the Hasmoneans. He just would not be the messiah. But if Jesus did not die, being resurrected, he was now Gods favoured and he was still the Messiah. Here is the problem – 1 Cor1:23 “but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” and this is the solution – 1 Cor15:14 Paul says, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Apocalyptic thought believed the dead would rise at the start of the new age, Jesus being “first fruits” that is the first to rise. (Cf Daniel12:2). Paul raised the steaks by proclaiming that a new age had already started with Jesus being the first to rise. This caused a great impetus for the Jesus movement and helped turn it away from its failed rebellious beginnings to a more successful spiritual movement greatly influenced by the Mystery religions. But Paul was a double edged sword, things started to go wrong when he started disrespecting Jewish laws. The reason Paul rose up in this organisation is that he was a car salesman as seen in 1 Cor. 9:19-23, he was a genius and all things to everyman. He was the preacher, propagandist and syncretist. The gentile side of the movement thrived under Paul. Paul had a totally different solution to the gentiles joining the movement than that if the Jerusalem council. The rift between Paul and the Jerusalem council headed by James is so raw in Galatians that it could be nothing but historical. To include Paul’s polemics in this letter attests to its historicity. By being able to see through the polemics, by an analysis of higher criticism you begin to recover the historical circumstances surrounding Jesus and his immediate aftermath. All these observances and clues give the indication that there were bits of historical data preserved. When you keep coming across these bits, eventually you say- hey these cover ups, overwrites, political agendas, compilations of contrasting traditions incorporated into the gospels and other bits that don’t really fit fiction, they come down on the side of historicity. You have got to be sensitive to ancient history or you’ll miss it. Back in 1931 Eisler who had a massive influence on Brandon and Eisenman said “for those who feel that we cannot go on for ever with our traditional histories of New Testament times, into which a life of Jesus cannot be made to fit, and with lives and characteristics of Jesus which cannot be made to fit into the contemporary history of Jews and Romans.”[10]

Most of the evidence has been tampered, overwritten, destroyed: all because Jesus was god and none of his very human aspects would ever be good enough for him to be god. That is why I said in relation to the evidence, when you walk on water, you leave no footprints. The Epistle of the Apostles, known also by its Latin name, Epistula Apostolorum, tries to convince us otherwise, that Jesus did leave footprints after the resurrection.

“At his insistence the disciples feel him and his wounds; and he tells Andrew “look at my feet and see if they do not leave a footprint. For it is written in the prophet, ‘The foot of a ghost or demon leaves no print on the ground” Epistula Apostolorum ch 11 Ethiopic.

“And I often wished, as I walked with him, to see if his footprint appeared on the ground—for I saw him raising “himself from the earth—and I never saw it.” (Acts of John, 93)

Acts of John sums up the heart of the matter, the evidence of a historical Jesus has left no footprints, evidence even though destroyed and tampered with, still leaves indications, clues and fingerprints of what was changed. With the help of a lot of detective work, a historical person can be shown at the core of all the literature. He may have been portrayed very different from the man on the ground in an attempt to make him a saviour god ascended to the sky.

[1] Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus.

[2] Dale Allison, JESUS OF NAZARETH
MILLENARIAN PROPHET

[3] Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium

[4] Harnack, Adolf, Militia Christi, The Christian Religion and the Military in the first Three Centuries, (English Translation Fortress Press, 1981), pp.26f

[5] Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus, ch4, fn 1.

[6] Pearce, Peace and the Gael, 216.

[7] Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution, Introduction.

[8] Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus,

________, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.

The gospels say the Romans recognised Jesus as a false king (Mk 15.16-20; Mt. 27.28-31; Jn 19.2-5), similar to at least one of the Sign Prophets known as the ‘Egyptian’. The ‘Egyptian’ may have called himself “king Messiah”, because Josephus uses the Greek verb τυραννεῖν (to be sole ruler)(Josephus, War 2.262). Our earliest witness to the Jesus movement, Paul has references to Jesus’ kingdom, βασιλείαν, which indicates that he was somehow considered a king:[1]

Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom (βασιλείαν) to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. (1 Cor. 15.24-25, cf. 6.9-10, 15.50, 4.20; Rom. 14:17)

Like the Egyptian Sign Prophet the gospels see Jesus as a prophet proclaiming the imminent arrival of the kingdom of Yahweh. This was a banner call that was used by many messianic figures, that the ‘Kingdom of Yahweh’ was at hand. Josephus reports that this is also the banner call of Judas the Galilean, he told his followers ‘they were cowards if they would endure to pay a tax to the Romans, and would, after God, submit to mortal men as their lords’ (War 2.118) and his movement would only accept ‘that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord.’ (Josephus, Ant. 18.23). ‘Jesus’ own expectation that the Kingdom of the Lord was near had apparently led his followers to expect a divine intervention in history and the establishment of God’s rule in the world, not just in the hearts and minds of a few.’[2] The gospel of Mark shows that this new kingdom was imminent.

Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power. (Mark 9:1), 

This was the saying of a typical apocalyptic prophet, many downtrodden peasants whose hopes were exhausted would rally around such a figure. This Kingdom of god as understood by the first century Jews and used as a banner call by many of the charismatic figures draws on the kingship that is ascribed to Yahweh in the Tanakh. 

Of all my sons—and Yahweh has given me many—he has chosen my son Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of Yahweh over Israel. He said to me: “Solomon your son is the one who will build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father. I will establish his kingdom forever if he is unswerving in carrying out my commands and laws, as is being done at this time.” (1 Chron. 28:5-7)

In previous studies of Jesus’ comparative figures both the messianic figures (as found in Josephus’ works) or the exorcists/faith healers (as described in rabbinic literature and Josephus) have all been used. Morton Smith observed that Acts 5:33-39 gets its history wrong putting Theudas before Judas and also takes liberties with history giving Paul the great Pharisaic teacher Gamaliel, yet this pales in comparison to realizing that Acts “shows that the Christians themselves expected Jesus to be seen as the same social type as Judas and Theudas.” (Emphasis is Morton Smiths).[3]

Let us now examine both sets of figures, firstly we will start with the messianic figures. ‘Jesus is called christos, anointed, the Greek equivalent of messiah, 270 times in Paul’s epistles.’[4] As understood from the letters of Paul a ‘messianic consciousness’ must have also played its part.[5] After Jesus was crucified there is no way he would have been known as the messiah unless he was recognised as such during his lifetime. If God did not intervene before Jesus was caught and executed- well he was not the messiah. The gospels saw Jesus as a ‘King Messiah’ (Luke 23.2) and ‘King of the Jews’ was the charge nailed to his execution cross. The movement of Jesus were a sect of Jewish messianists. As Horsley said, ‘For just at the time of Herod and Jesus, several significant movements emerged among the Judean and Galilean people that were headed by figures acclaimed by their followers as kings or by figures who promised to reenact the deliverance of Israel from foreign rule in Egypt.’[6] Many messianic figures were seen as a king figure. Bar Kockba in his letters referred to himself as a prince.[7] Judas son of Ezekiel had ‘ambitious desire of the royal dignity’ (Ant.17.272). Simon of Peraea, a slave of Herod the Great ‘dared to put a crown on his head’ (Ant. 17.273) and Athronges the shepherd ‘dared to aspire to be king’ (Ant. 17.278). And as already discussed the Egyptian prophet saw himself as a ‘tyrant’ (War 2.262). The Slavonic passage on Jesus tried to deny that Jesus was ‘desirous of kingship’ which may have preserved that that phrase was original to the Testimonium Flavianum. [See here to show how the Slavonic used a primitive pre Eusebian source]. As seen above many messianic figures were declared a βασιλεὺς (King) by their supporters at a drop of a hat. ‘And now Judea was full of robberies; and as the several companies of the seditious lighted upon any one to head them, he was created a king immediately, in order to do mischief to the public.’ (Ant. 17.285). This meshes very well with a verse in John:

Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. (Jn. 6.15).

Social conditions ensured ‘why so many hundreds, even thousands of Jewish peasants, were prepared to abandon their homes to pursue some prophet into the wilderness, or to rise in rebellion against their Jewish and Roman overlords when the signal was given by some charismatic “King” or to flee to the hills to join some brigand band. Peasants generally do not take such drastic action unless conditions have become such that they can no longer pursue traditional ways of life.’[8] Novenson shows Josephus interprets Judaism for non-Jews in the Greco- Roman world and reasons why Josephus calls the Jewish insurgents ‘diadem-wearers’ and not ‘messiahs’. Josephus was aware of messianism as seen when he recounts the ‘ambiguous oracle’ (War 6.12-13) that drove them to war.[9] ‘Christianity was not alone in the production of messiahs; indeed, its Christ competed for converts with the christs of other apocalyptic sects, including the formidable cult of John the Baptist.’[10]

These messianic figures were similar to Jesus but it is also important to examine another set of Galilean charismatic figures. Geza Vermes saw Jesus as one in a long line of charismatic prophets. We will examine a few Galilean charismatic figures who interceded Yahweh for miraculous events such as bringing on rain in the case of Honi and some thaumaturgic actions of Ben Dosa.[11]. As Vermes says, ‘To understand the figure of Honi it is necessary to remember that from the time of the prophet Elijah. Jews believed that holy men were able to exert their will on natural phenomena’[12].An exorcist/healer would explain the initial exaltation of Jesus among his own people, given Jesus the confidence that god was working with him. Much of the rise of these figures had to do with healing and exorcisms as people had thought the devil was the cause of sickness – ‘in the final period of the Second Temple era (second century BC to the first century AD) prophets were still expected, as the first Book of the Maccabees (1 Mac. 4.46; 14.41), the Qumran Community Rule (1QS 9:11) and the New Testament (Mt. 11.9; 13.57; 21.11; Mk. 6.4;  Lk. 4.24; 7.16, 26; 24.19) demonstrate roles, that is to say, as healer of the physically ill, exorciser of the possessed, and dispenser of forgiveness to sinners, must be seen in the context to which they belong, namely charismatic Judaism.’[13]

Jesus making his way to Jerusalem and ending up crucified better aligns him with a subset of these two groups examined, namely the messianic ‘king’ figures and the Galilean charismatic figures.

In the ‘Gospels, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, to shouts of Hosanna to the Son of David. For the biblically illiterate, Matthew 21:4–5 supplies the quotation from Zechariah 9:9, even providing Jesus with two animals rather than one, missing the Hebraic parallelism. It is certainly tempting to understand this incident in light of the sign prophets in Josephus.’[14]

That subset is the various sign prophets mentioned by Josephus.

Horsley says, “in the ordinary Palestinian Jewish context, [these described imposters were] prophets filled with the Spirit. Thus fired by the Spirit, these prophets and their followers thought they were about to participate in the divine transformation of a world…”^[15] That is how the ordinary people viewed them, but seen from all the passages Josephus has on the sign prophets, this is how he described them:

Now, we know what he [Josephus] thought of those who harboured or encouraged messianic pretensions, namely, that they were nothing but a band of fanatics who broke riots and the seeds of war. In fact, Josephus went so far as to affirm (in War 6.313) that the Messianic oracles contained in the prophetic books of Israel referred to Emperor Vespasian.^[16]

By recognising that Jesus was fulfilling a leadership role recognised by first century Jewish crowds helps explain why Jesus became the head of a movement and eventually remembered and exalted. Horsley shows that his followers played just as an important role in this rise to fame:

We are not searching for Jesus the individual in himself, but for Jesus-in-relationship, Jesus-in- interactive-role(s).

A focally important aspect of a relational and contextual approach to Jesus is attempting to discern what interactive roles he was playing or in which he was being placed by his followers/movement(s).

… [we can] detect a few roles that were very much alive in popular circles. Josephus’s accounts of the prophets Theudas and “the Egyptian” are evidence of prophets like Moses and/or Joshua who led movements of renewal of Israel at the popular level. The credibility of this role is enhanced by parallel evidence from the scribal level, in the “prophet like Moses” in Deuteronomy and the Moses-like portrayals of the Righteous Teacher in Qumran literature. Josephus’s accounts of Jesus ben Hananiah (and perhaps of John the Baptist) provide evidence of oracular prophets among Judean (and Galilean) peasants. Moreover, the accounts in Josephus and rabbinic literature of popularly acclaimed “kings” or “messiahs” such as Judas son of Hezekiah, Simeon, and Athronges in 4 BCE, Simon bar Giora during the great revolt, and Simon bar Kokhba, leader of the Bar Kokhba revolt, provide convincing evidence for the role of popular messiahs leading movements of independence and renewal. More of a stretch is to move from textual references to Elijah to a confident positing of a role such as a new Elijah. The most convincing evidence for such a role, since Elijah’s memory must have been derived originally from northern popular tradition, would be the gospels themselves, which understand both John the Baptist and Jesus in terms of Elijah. It is difficult to judge how to use references to the future role of Elijah, such as that by Malachi, a Judean prophet closely attached to the Temple, and Ben Sira, the Judean scribe who lavishes praise on the Oniad high priests. The combination of these elite and popular indications of the memory of Elijah and his role in gospel tradi- tions may be sufficient to project a role of a prophet like Elijah, one very much like that of Moses and Joshua.

That Mark, Q speeches, Matthew and John all represent Jesus so promi- nently as resembling or imitating Moses and Elijah in both his actions and his speeches makes it all the more inviting to reason back toward Jesus’ adaptation of such roles. His prophetic pronouncements against the Temple and high priestly rulers are reminiscent of that other, later peasant prophet Jesus son of Hananiah; and several of his prophetic pronouncements clearly take traditional Israelite prophetic forms.

Richard Horsley [17]

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[1] Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, La invención de Jesús de Nazaret, (Siglo XXI de España Editores, S. A., 2018),Kindle, ch 1.

[2] E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford, 2001), p.43.

[3] Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, (Barnes &Noble, 1978), p.20.

[4] John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star, Messianism in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2^nd Ed., (Cambridge: Erdmans, 2010), p.2.

[5] Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew, A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), p.15.

[6] Richard A. Horsley, ‘Messiah, Magi, and Model Imperial King’, in Christmas Unwrapped Consumerism , Christ, and Culture, ed. Richard Horsley and James Tracy, ( Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001), pp. 139-61, (141).

[7] ‘Bar Koziba, Prince of Israel’, this is how Bar Kokbha referred to himself taken from the letter from Wadi Murabba, see Józef Tadeusz Milik, Papyrus No. 24.

[8] Richard A.Horsley and John S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs, Popular Movements in the time of Jesus, (Winston Press, 1985), p.50

[9] Matthew V. Novenson, The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users (Oxford, 2017), p.147-8

[10] R. Joseph Hoffman, Celsus, On The True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, Translation and Introduction, (Oxford, 1987), p.7.

[11] Honi the Circle-Drawer by the rabbis (y. Taanit 16a–b;  b. Taanit 19a; 23a) and Onias the Righteous by Josephus. (Antiquities 14.2.1-21). Hanina Ben Dosa (example Ta’anit. 24b–25a; Berakhot 34b)

[12] Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p.69.

[13] Vermes, Jesus the Jew, chapter 3, (58).

[14] John J. Collins. 2021. “Millenarianism in Ancient Judaism.” In James Crossley and Alastair Lockhart (eds.) Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements. 15 January 2021. Retrieved from http://www.cdamm.org/articles/ancient-judaism.

[15] Horsley and Hansen, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs, pp. 161-2.

[16] Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, La naturaleza del texto original del Testimonium Flavianum. Una crítica de la propuesta de John P. Meier, E STUDIOS BÍBLICOS LXXII (2014) p.273.

[17] Richard Horsley, “Jesus-in-Context, A Relational Approach” in Holmén and Porter (editors), Handbook for the study of the Historical Jesus, (2011), p.227-228.

In the Facebook forum (a Spanish historical Jesus group) I was asked to explain why I hold the positions I do on the Testimonium Flavianum.

Question:

There are several points I would question in your proposal (but I’d rather dig deeper into them). But one point stands out to me. I understand, Dave, that you consider that Josephus could not have referred to Jesus as “the Christ”, since, from your position, this would imply acknowledging him as messiah; and you consider that Josephus already had his own “messiah”, which was Vespasian. [War 6.312-313] I think he could have identified him simply by writing “the one called Christ” (as he does in another passage), as a name given to him, without this representing any messianic recognition or title. However, why do you propose that Josephus did not even write of him by calling him by his name, Jesus, and that in the original passage he would only write “a certain man”? What would be the implication for Josephus to write that his name was Jesus? Do you consider that he did not know his name, as is the case with some of the other “sign prophet” characters you mention?

Answer:

Point 1

Reconstruction of the TF

First of all, the original is lost but we do know Josephus did not write what is in the textus receptus (received text in Antiquities) from the variants alone. There are words we know that are from the original from these variants. The academic papers I released show how these original words would fit in a model of what Josephus would have realistically written.

Rather than attempt to do a textus restitutus, I instead opted for a model reconstruction. This can be successfully done by examining how the text of the TF was quoted and misquoted through the generations. In my paper I separated the text into layers and through the variants and indirect quotes determine through some textual criticism what were the most primitive phrases that would have come from the hand of Josephus.

Point 2

“He was the Christ.”

First of all we have three witnesses that are missing the phrase, “he was the Christ.”

1. The Excidio

De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae (”On the ruin of the city of Jerusalem”) Pseudo-Hegesippius did not see that exclamation in his copy of Antiquities written by Josephus. In Pseudo-Hegesippius paraphrase of the Testimonium Flavianum (TF), he would have certainly used that phrase in his Christianised document.

Here is an abstract from my paper to put this in perspective:

“ὁ χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν! (”He was the Christ”). When Pseudo-Hegesippius wrote De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae (”On the ruin of the city of Jerusalem”) he did not see that exclamation in his copy of Antiquities written by Josephus. In Ps-Hegesippius paraphrase of the Testimonium Flavianum (TF), he would have certainly used that phrase in his Christianised document. When Jerome translated the TF for his book De Viris Illustribus (”On Illustrious Men”) he lifted it from Eusebius’ History and wrote et credebatur esse Christus (”he was believed to be Christ”). The Textus Receptus (”received text” of Antiquities) has a third redactional layer stating ”he was the Christ”. This paper aims to examine at least three redactional layers in the TF.” [1]

2. The Slavonic

Christians do not downgrade and drop that phrase, so a different transmission line than Eusebius’ tampering. This argues that a source of the addition to War in the Slavonic was pre Eusebian.

There are numerous sources to track especially in regard to the additions inserted and added to Josephus’ War book by the Russian chronographer in creating the Slavonic. Apart from Byzantium historians Hamartolus and Malalas, I find a different transmission line going east which would have also influenced those insertions. The Russian chronographer was highly educated and had lots of sources. One possible source could have been a pre Eusebian manuscript that went east.

As observed by Kate Leeming, “Jesus is rarely referred to by name … elsewhere he is the “wonderworker” or the “king who did not reign” or some other term. Why would a Christian be reticent about naming Jesus?”^[2]

Meschersky (Meščerskij) in trying to explain why the Slavonic dropped Jesus’ name in the exact passage, he states unconvincingly that it was to make it less Christian, unlikely given how Christian the passage already is.[3]

A better explanation other than why the name Jesus was dropped and the title Christ is if there was a source that originally had “a certain man”. Eusebius is chief suspect for adding the name Jesus and the phrase “he was believed to be Christ.” An interesting paper on the hypothesis of a pre Eusebian TF going east examining the Latin quotations is written by John Curran:

“Copies of Josephus’ original continued to circulate in the East where they failed to make an impression on a succession of Christian readers from Chrysostom to Photius.”[4]

3. Origen

As stated by Zvi Baras, “Eusebius is clearly contradicted by the statement of Origen (185-254), the revered church father who preceded Eusebius at the school of Caesarea. [This opposes Eusebius’ quote of “He was the Christ”.] Origen, in his writings, twice criticizes Josephus for not having accepted Jesus as the messiah. The first occurs in his polemical book, Contra Celsum I.47, which was intended to refute the attack on Christianity made by Celsus the pagan. Here Origen refers explicitly to Josephus: “The same author, although he did not believe in Jesus as Christ.” The second appears in his Commentarii in Matthaeum X, 17.” [5]

This actually ties in with the Excidio as Johannes Nussbaum observed:

In De excidio Hierosolymitano 2:12, Pseudo-Hegesippus paraphrases the TF, omitting the statement that Jesus was the Christ. He then vehemently criticises Josephus that he testified of Jesus, but did not believe in him as the Christ. It can be concluded that Pseudo-Hegesippus must have read a kind of TF, otherwise he would not have screamed that Josephus did not believe despite his report on Jesus. The situation is reminiscent of Origen writings – he wrote that Josephus did not believe in the messiahship of Jesus.[6]

Point 3

There is no real justification to translate “legomenos” (λεγομένου) as “so-called.”

I can find no other occasion in Josephus where it is used in such a fashion, and that translation I have never seen any decent justification for. And looking at the Greek, you can tell this translation is even less sensible. Specifically, the only instance of it being an insult that I can find (“so-called” 2 Thess. 2:4) also excludes the article τὸν… which is present in the TF. And most similar occasions, where legomenos or legemenon (or other variants) are used with τὸν, it is not an insult.

The “so-called” you are referring to tends to be the apologetic translation of legomenos of Josephus Ant. 20.200. And what do we find there, “τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος” the article in question.

I see no evidence anywhere that Christianity was influential in Rome in the 90s CE. And Josephus wouldn’t care, as they were not a recognized cult, and according to Pliny and Trajan, could face the death penalty. He wouldn’t care about pleasing a cult that wasn’t approved of by the state, the state which kept his head on his shoulders.

In agreement with Inowlocki and Twelvetree, I hold the position that there was an original TF but the James passage wasn’t about James the brother of Jesus. I hold the position that the James passage was about a different James, a rival candidate to the high priest.

Point 4

Not naming Jesus:

Josephus did not know the name of most of the sign prophets, a few exceptions are Theudas, he also knew the nickname of the ‘’Egyptian’ (though not his actual name) and the only reason Josephus knew Jonathan the Weaver was a personal accusation made against Josephus by the Lybian governor Catullus. Josephus is accused along with other prominent Jewish leaders of being implicated in the Jonathan plot (War 7.488).

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[1] David Allen, A Model Reconstruction of what Josephus would have realistically written about Jesus, Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 18, 2022.

[2] Kate Leeming, “The Slavonic Version of Josephus’s Jewish War” in Chapman and Rodgers (eds.) A Companion to Josephus, (Oxford, 2016), p.395.

[3] H. Leeming and K. Leeming eds, The Slavonic Version of Josephus’s Jewish War, A Synoptic Comparison of the English Translation by H. St. J. Thackeray with the Critical Edition by N. A. Meščerskij of the Slavonic version in the Vilna manuscript translated into English by H. Leeming and L. Osinkina, in Arbeiten Zur Geschichte Des Antiken Judentums und des antigen Judentums und des Urchistentums 46 (Boston: Brill 2003), p.19

[4] J. Curran,“To Be or to Be Thought to Be”: The Testimonium Flavianum (again), Novum Testamentum, 59(1), 2017, p.93

[5] Zvi Baras, “The Testimonium Flavianum and the Martyrdom of James, chapter 16 in Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, Eds Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), pp.339-340.

[6] Johannes Nussbaum, Das Testimonium Flavianum Ein klassisches Beispiel einer Echtheitsdiskussion, 2010 Novum Testamentum 52(1), pp.72-82

For this blog I would like to thank the many happy discussions I had with my friends, Ben Evan, Fred J Kohn and Stephen Nelson and others.

There are many reasons why I’m a historicist and one of these reasons is just the unconvincing arguments put forward by Mythicists. Here I’m going to discuss Paul’s use of born and made. It is noteworthy that Paul seems to break with the Biblical precedent of this idiom, using γίνομαι (ginomai = made) rather than γεννῶμαι (gennomai = born). Perhaps it just sounded better for him to use the same verb in succession, rather than switching verbs γεννῶμαι (ἐκ γυναικός) verses γίνομαι (ὑπὸ νόμον). Γίνομαι is consistent with his characterization of the incarnation in the “Christ hymn” in Philippians:

but (Christ Jesus) emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made (γενόμενος) in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:7 (NASB) 

So Paul may be emphasising the idea that Christ “became incarnate” as a human being, beyond merely being born. And then he was “put under law” in the sense described in Luke 2:21-23, where Jesus was circumcised after eight days according to the law and presented at the temple (Lev 12:1-8, Exod 13:2).

Let us examine some of Carriers arguments taking Romans 1:3 as an example., “… concerning his son, born [γενομένου] of the seed [σπέρματος] of David according to the flesh.” 

The Greek reads:

περὶ τοῦ υֻֻֻֻἱοῦ αὐτοῦ τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος ∆αυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα

The grammar of the text does not lend itself to Carrier’s reading of Romans 1:3, as there are a few examples in the LXX, [1] other Jewish texts, [2] and Greco-Roman literature [3] where similar language is used for physical birth. 

Now let us examine Rom. 1:4

In Romans 1:4, a phrase like “Ginomai” is “τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει,” which translates to “was declared to be the Son of God in power.” The term “ὁρισθέντος” or “horisthentos,” means “declared” or “designated,” and “Ginomai” isn’t explicitly in this phrase, but its essence is implied in the meaning of “horisthentos.”

So we can see Paul is quite comfortable interchanging the ideas of made/born even in between two verses. This reduces an over significance of meaning on the word “made” which Paul probably employs to emphasise Jesus being greater than one just born.

Carrier appeals to 1 Corinthians 15:45 to argue that Paul uses γίνομαι to say that Adam’s body was “made” or “manufactured” by God. However, this passage actually hinders Carrier’s interpretation. As Chrissy Hansen points out,

“… Paul’s entire purpose in this passage is both noting that Adam is historical (as the founder of the human race) and that Adam had a physical (earthly) body. His contrast in the passage is Christ’s raised up, resurrected, i.e., spiritual, body meaning initially he had a body equivalent to Adam’s, i.e., an earthly historical one. As such, this parallel between them could help establish that Paul thought of Jesus as a historical person.” [4]

Hansen also rightly draws attention to the fact that Paul is citing LXX Genesis 2:7, which uses ἔπλασεν for the forming of Adam’s body, and εγένετο for when Adam’s body comes alive (the aorist indicative meaning “became”).

“Therefore, Paul is not referencing the manufacturing of Adam’s body in his citation of LXX Gen 2:7, but a change of state in which Adam’s body is made alive. As such, there is no bodily construction happening in 1 Cor 15:45, which the grammar lends itself to.” [5]

Likewise, and contra Carrier, 1 Corinthians 15:37 uses γενησόμενον as in “to be” (future tense), but not to indicate the manufacture of bodies. As Craig Keener notes, 2 Corinthians 5:1–5 (in parallel with 1 Corinthians 15:51–54) actually indicates that the body we die in “will be changed” (ἀλλαγησόμεθα), not manufactured. [6] 

Since “seed” (σπέρματος) is often used in both Jewish [7] and Greco-Roman [8] literature as a metaphor for genealogical descent, Carrier’s attempt to read σπέρματος in Romans 1:3 in a literal fashion is problematic. 

Finally, Carrier’s point that Paul never uses γίνομαι to mean ‘be born’ is irrelevant, because, as Simon Gathercole points out, 

“… Paul does not frequently in his letters refer to people being born: where he uses γεννάω, he is referring to the immediate parents, and so this would not work in the genealogical sense of Rom. 1.3, because David did not beget Jesus.” [9]

“Born of a woman” was a common Hebrew idiom for “human.” This goes back at least as far as Job, which is believed to be the oldest book in the bible. It occurs at Job 14:1; 15:14; 25:4. The references in Job (14:1, 15:14, 25:4) to man/men as being “born of a woman” (γεννητὸς γυναικός), using the adjectival form of “begotten”. And the phrase in Job lacks the preposition ἐκ (“from”), relying on the genitive form “of woman/women”. Matthew 11:11 reflects the exact same phrasing (contra Paul), only in the plural – “among those born of women” (ἐν γεννητοῖς γυναικῶν).

The Septuagint version of these verses uses the same “gen-” Greek verb as the Galatians 4:4 reference. The same “gen-” verb is also used in Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28 as a description of John the baptist: “among those born of women there is no one greater than John,”

Dr. Carrier is correct in that this is not the same verb for “born” as Paul uses in Galatians 4:23 “geg-“, but that is beside the point. Idioms are locked expressions in a culture, and can only be interpreted on a phrase level, not as a literal. The typical English example would be “kick the bucket” meaning “die,” when death has nothing to do with kicking a bucket.

Also the Dead Sea Scrolls yield many interesting examples of the phrase “born of woman” referring to humans in general. In one of several instances – 1 QS (Community Rule) 11.21 – it says man is “one born of woman… shaped from dust has he been”.

No text ever claimed that someone who is born of a women was actually born in heaven. ginomai is just regularly used for human birth and it doesn’t take much to find the references. If you have Loeb Classical Library access, you can just search it and find so many examples.

The references in Job (14:1, 15:14, 25:4) to man/men as being “born of a woman” (γεννητὸς γυναικός), using the adjectival form of “begotten”. And the phrase in Job lacks the preposition ἐκ (“from”), relying on the genitive form “of woman/women”. Matthew 11:11 reflects the exact same phrasing (contra Paul), only in the plural – “among those born of women” (ἐν γεννητοῖς γυναικῶν).

The argument that Paul used a less frequent Greek term for giving birth is completely off. Just think of all the strange expressions surrounding pregnancy and child birth in modern European languages. The English idiom “be in labour” sounds very strange to people outside the anglo-saxon language community. To be clear, thinking there is a pattern based on the occurrence a term only four times in an entire text is just a bit off so Richard Carrier claiming “Paul’s usual term for birth is not ginomai” does not work. You cannot make any solid conclusions about someone’s regular language and terminology on the basis of four occurrences of a word. It is already exceptionally uncommon and inconsistently used to begin with. Carrier concluding that “ginomai cannot be Paul’s standard word for birth because he uses gennao three times elsewhere for it” is absurd to say the least.

Here’s a deeper analysis, my friend Stephen Nelson is an expert in ancient attic and koine Greek:

That “γίνομαι” is simply not a rare or particularly significant term. And Philippians does not explicitly narrate Jesus’ birth, per say. I obviously don’t read into it that way.

The counter to that would be to point out that later scribes obviously took issue with Paul’s language, changing the spelling in Gal 4:4 and (to a lesser extent) in Rom 1:3 from “γενόμενον” to “γεννώμενον” (at the expense of grammatical coherence).

And my response to that would be to point out that this was done to counter Docetism, not Mythicism. Changing Paul’s description, to say that Jesus was “born” (explicitly), was probably thought to be a more effective tool to counter Docetism, than leaving Paul’s actual description of Jesus’ “coming into being”.

As you may know, “γίνομαι” is only formally ‘grammatically passive’ (on the surface). And the term ‘deponent’ is falling out of fashion (as an umbrella term for describing ‘Middle-only’ and ‘passive-only’ verbs in Greek) – since it’s a verbal category borrowed from Latin. The term’s actually become a bit stigmatized in Greek studies. But I still think ‘deponent’ (MG – αποθετικό) is a useful category.

So I think his analysis of Paul’s use of “γίνομαι” is symptomatic of this kind of approach to the Greek text, where one finds a range of definitions in a lexicon and backs into one particular ‘sense’ of the word for the purpose of exegesis. That approach can have limitations when dealing with a complex and ubiquitous word like “γίνομαι”.

For example, it has 10 different definition categories in BDAG.

1. to come into being through process of birth or natural production, be born, be produced

2. to come into existence, be made, be created, be manufactured, be performed

This challenges Carriers false dichotomy between ‘birth’ and ‘manufacturing’.

So, from a Greek perspective, I think the best way to read Philippians 2:7-8 is to view Jesus as the active agent of his own incarnation throughout the process. There’s no need to insert God as the agent here.

More analysis:

Paul may be emphasizing/reiterating the idea that Christ “became incarnate” as a human being, beyond merely being born. And then he was “put under law” in the sense described in Luke 2:21-23, where Jesus was circumcised after eight days according to the law and presented at the temple (Lev 12:1-8, Exod 13:2).

There are references in Job (14:1, 15:14, 25:4) to man/men as being “born of a woman” (γεννητὸς γυναικός), using the adjectival form of “begotten”. And the phrase in Job lacks the preposition ἐκ (“from”), relying on the genitive form “of woman/women”. Matthew 11:11 reflects the exact same phrasing (contra Paul), only in the plural – “among those born of women” (ἐν γεννητοῖς γυναικῶν).

And here are Ancient Greek examples:

ANCIENT EXAMPLES OF “COME INTO BEING FROM”:

It was noted in the comments recently that nowhere in the NT is “γενόμενος ἐκ…” ever used to imply “made from…”, as in “made from some material”. But, as described above, such a connotation would be more along the lines of “came into being from…”. This is actually a rather common idiom that implies a transition from one state to another.

IN ISOCRATES’ “ARCHIDAMUS” (6.17) IT SAYS, 

“When Heracles had put off this life and *from being mortal became* a god…” (ἐκ θνητοῦ γενόμενος). 

Here “mortality” isn’t really a material that Hercules is produced from. It’s the mortal state from which he is immortalized and deified. 

Many such examples are found in Plutarch: cf. Tiberius Gracchus (4) where Tiberius is described as “emerging from boyhood” (ἐκ παίδων γενόμενος); cf. Timoleon (1.2) where Nisaeus is described as “becoming a master from an exile” (ἐκ φυγάδος… κύριος γενόμενος); cf. “Quomodo quit suss in virtue sentient prefectus” (1.7 or 1.4) where he describes Caeneus’ transformation, into a man from a woman (γενόμενος… ἀνὴρ ἐκ γυναικὸς). This last example contains similar wording to Galatians 4:4; but in the context of a mythological SEX-CHANGE!

The other example is from “Helen” (10.18), where Theseus is said to be the *offspring of Poseidon* (γενόμενος δ’ ἐκ Ποσειδῶνος). So that example falls in line with the figurative use of “γίνομαι” for ‘birth’ or ‘begetting’.

This is a third blog in a series of why I find mythicism unconvincing. To the first one on the brother of lord, I’d like to add the following comments

Carrier insists that the only way Paul could ever specify biological kinship would be to say something like “brother in the flesh”. Yet in Philemon 16 is the only spot where Paul does this. Philemon 10 has the reference which includes the verb “γεννῶ”, where the author indicates that he “begot” Onesimus, which would contradict Carrier’s claim that Paul reserves that word for actual, literal “birth”. This shows that words for “birth” are flexible (either metaphor or literal), to the extent that Carrier cannot make that arbitrary division anymore.

You can see the second blog of this series here.

——

Sources:

[1] E.g., Genesis 21:3; 46:27; 48:5

[2] Of particular importance is Josephus _Antiquities_ 1.150 where γίνομαι and γεννάω (Paul’s supposedly more common term for “birth” [Carrier, _OHJ_, 576]) are used interchangeably; Philo uses γίνομαι to refer to the birth of Moses twice in the forms γενομένων and γενόμενος in _Moses_ 2.192–193; see also Philo, _Virtues_ 37.202; Josephus, in turn, uses γίνομαι for birth on numerous occasions in _Antiquities_ 1.150; 1.303–304; 7.154; 15.11; and 20.20–21. 

[3] E.g., Strabo, _Geographica_ 10.15; Diodorus Siculus, _Library of History_ 4.62; 4.67; 4.72; 4.75; Plato, _Republic_ 8.553; Plato, _Alcibiades_ 1.121; Isocrates, _Helen_ 27; Herodotus, _Histories_ 2.146; Marcellinus, _Thucydides_ 54; Hippocrates of Cos, _Nature of the Child_ Introduction 8.481–482; Plutarch, _Moralia_; Plutarch, _Ten Orators_ 4.836; Plutarch, _Thesus_ 8; Plutarch, _Marius_ 3; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _Roman Antiquities_ 1.40.2; 1.53.4; PGM 4.719–724. 

[4] Chris M. Hansen, “Romans 1:3 and the Celestial Jesus: A Rebuttal to Revisionist Interpretations of Jesus’s Descendance from David in Paul,” MJTM 22 (2021): 36; see also Gordon D. Fee, _The First Epistle to the Corinthians_ (The New International Commentary on the New Testament) (Eerdmans, 1987), 788-790; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, _First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary_ (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) (Yale University Press, 2008), 597-598. 

[5] Ibid., 36-37. 

[6] See Craig Keener, _1-2 Corinthians_ (The New Cambridge Bible Commentary) (Cambridge University Press), 179.

[7] E.g., LXX Genesis 4:25; 15:1–5; LXX 1 Samuel 20:42; LXX 2 Samuel 22:51; LXX 1 Kings 2:33; Philo, _Posterity_ 3.10–11; 36.124–125; 49.170–171; 50.172–173; 53.180; Philo, _Moses_ 1.279; Philo, _Heir_ 2–3; 65–66; 86–87; Josephus, _Antiquities_ 5.220; 9.109; 9.143–144; 11.304.

[8] E.g., Aeschylus, _Supplices_ 290; Libanius, _Orations_ 13.6. 

[9] Simon Gathercole, “The Historical and Human Existence of Jesus in Paul’s Letters,” JSHJ 16 (2018): 191 n32.

There are many passages from Paul’s letters that make mythicists uncomfortable. From the passages in 1 Cor. 11 & 15, Jesus is eating and drinking and talking to someone before his death and resurrection, before the appearances to the apostles in 1 Cor. 15. Most mythicists miss the point thinking that this does not matter as to them it is an obvious ahistorical event. But that is not the point. It also does not matter about the reliability of Paul’s depiction or his source of information (whether it comes from a revelation or not, and that we simply do not know whether the kernel of this story did or not). What concerns me are the circumstances and timeline of the narrative. It doesn’t need to be a “historical event”. It might be, it might not be. Either way, it attests to an understanding of Jesus by the earliest communities that Jesus taught stuff prior to his crucifixion, over supper. So even if Paul is making it up or thinking he’s receiving it in a revelation, he still seems to be speaking about an earthly Jesus event. Paul represents what the earliest community thought, whether they are imagining it or not, and they think Jesus did stuff before he died. This contradicts Carriers main thesis that the earliest communities only understood Jesus as an angel who did not live or die. Paul describes a scene that has all the hallmarks of a teacher – breaking of bread, the giving of “do this” instruction, etc. This passage argues against minimal mythicism. The mythicists have no decent explanation for Paul’s references to Jesus’ having a communal meal “on the night he was handed over” in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

Another passage that makes the mythicist hypothesis unlikely is where Paul disagrees and differentiates the teaching of Jesus on divorce from his own. If Jesus was a figment of Paul’s imagination, this would hardly happen. (A figment of Paul’s imagination would actually agree with Paul, logic that escapes mythicists). Basically you don’t have ideological disagreements with people who aren’t real.

To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife. To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.

1 Cor. 7:10-12

Paul cannot be referring to the Hebrew Scriptures, because in the Tanakh it is acceptable for a man to divorce a woman (Deut. 24:1–4), so it can only be the words of Jesus here. So as it is not the LORD in the Tanakh, it can only have come from somebody whom Paul calls Lord – Paul refers to “Jesus the messiah” as the Lord as seen in 1 Cor. 8:6.

Jesus has an absolute prohibition on divorce whereas “Paul then takes an intriguing turn as he overrides Jesus’ command by specifying when divorce is acceptable.” [1] among mixed marriages of believers and unbelievers:

“But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances” (1 Cor 7:15)

Here is another passage uncomfortable on mythicism where Paul is pretty explicit that Jesus was human: “For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:21-22)

If Paul thought Jesus was human (he did), it’s far more likely he assumed he lived where other humans do – the Earth – or else he likely would have clarified otherwise somewhere. In Jewish reckoning at the time, Earth is where humans are – they’re literally made out of material from the Earth (as Paul understands as well – see 1 Cor. 15:46-49). 1 Cor. 15 would have been a great spot for him to indicate that Jesus wasn’t on Earth like other humans, because he emphasizes that future human resurrections will be just like Jesus’ resurrection (the first fruit). And then he goes on to discuss the distinction between Earthly bodies and resurrected bodies.

Another point lost on mythicists is that to first century apocalyptic Jewish people only actual people resurrect, Jesus could only have been understood to be human here as Paul sees him as the first to resurrect (1 Cor. 15:23).

All indications seem to be that, for Paul, fleshy and bloody human bodies *are* specifically Earthly bodies: “There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another.”

Yet never clarifies that Jesus’ flesh and blood wasn’t Earthly.

“… that Jesus had in fact lived and died a few years earlier. When Paul claims that he no longer knows Christ “according to the flesh” (2 Cor 5:16), he is not describing his ignorance of the earthly Jesus but his [previous] failure to recognize the crucified Jesus as the Messiah.” [2] Michael B. Thompson shows that in context, Paul’s “limited, human evaluation of the significance of the crucifixion of Christ changed dramatically when he came to faith.” [3] Paul “knows that he has seen the Lord (1 Cor 9:1; 15:8; Gal 1:16) and would insist that these intrinsically revelatory appearances are as real and historical as the ordinary observation of other concrete persons and events……..No doubt, Paul’s Christ is not a purely mythological figure.” [4] “…we regard no one according to flesh, we know him no longer in that way” (2 Cor. 5:16) does not mean you met the person personally. It is obvious that 2 Cor. 5:16 does not mean the Corinthians knew Jesus personally, Carrier seems to think this is a requirement on historicism, but that it is not so, the passage shows that they knew of him and that is enough. [5] What is in the passage is that Paul (who also did not meet Jesus), knew that Jesus had recently lived. The “we” in this passage also means that the community he is speaking to also knew Jesus had lived recently and they also did not meet Jesus. So it’s hard to see what Carrier’s objection is here.

The phrase “Kata Sarka” (according to the flesh) in 2 Cor. 5:16 cannot refer to an otherwordly existence. 

“… even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view [kata sarka, ‘according to the flesh’], we know him no longer in that way.” [6]

2 Cor. 5:16

In the context of the letter: Paul uses spiritual and fleshy people to mean spiritual and unspiritual. “Those interpreters who followed Baur in regard to the theological centre of Paul were convinced that Paul’s language about the Spirit and its antithesis—the flesh—came from the Greek world of thought.” [7] Unspiritual cannot be applied to Jesus when Paul describes him “according to the flesh” in the context of this verse, so it can only have one meaning: that of when Jesus was alive. Paul also referred to Jesus as an actual human being in Romans, there are just too many indications of Paul emphasising the humanity of Jesus, to take Jesus as a revelatory being only:

For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Rom. 5:10).
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! (Rom. 5:15)

And after his death, Jesus became an intercessor on behalf of God the father (Rom.8:34). In Romans 9 Paul distinguishes between descendants/children of Israel and children of God. Several times he makes this distinction with the phrase “according to the flesh”.

In Roman’s 1:3 Paul uses the same distinction to describe Jesus’s relationship to king David. Saying he is a descendant according to the flesh. This should be enough to settle any debate of Paul thinking Jesus was a real person.

The only place where mythicists really think they have a strong case was once brought up by Doherty, this is where Paul claimed in 1 Cor. 2:8 that Jesus was crucified by supernatural forces, the archons. The short answer to this is that archons were influencing people, which is common in Jewish literature.

In one of the places Paul references Jesus as crucified he uses the word Stauros. (Philippians 2:8). Josephus uses this term Stauros to tell of Romans crucifying Jews. Mythicists claim that Jesus was crucified in outer space but this is not necessary at all. David M Litwa points out that there is no crucifixion in the sky in Paul’s letters. [8] That reading is not there. That’s only a mythicist construct. Jesus was known as of flesh (2 cor. 5:16) and that is on earth not in space. To support this ad hoc hypothesis they claim 1 Thess. 2:14-16 as an interpolation, but the reasons given are suspect and weak. Most of Carrier’s arguments are directed at the verse “But wrath has come upon them at last!” as he associates this with the Temple destruction, but that is only reading the epistles retrospectively. [9] Robert Jewett rightly stated, “From the perspective of those who know about the Jewish-Roman war, it is surely the most appropriate choice. But to someone who lived before that catastrophe, several of the other events could easily have appeared to be a final form of divine wrath.” [10] This is what happens when you are reading this with hindsight, there were plenty other disasters, famines, persecutions etc, plus the fact that “wrath of god” is standard Jewish trope since the time of Amos. As Robert Jewett noted:

“I Thess. ii. 16, ‘but God’s wrath has come upon them at last’, may refer to the disturbance which occurred in Jerusalem during the Passover of 49 when twenty to thirty thousand Jews were supposed to have been killed. (Ant. 20.112 and War 2. 224-7). Since this disturbance was instigated by Zealots (War 2.225), Paul could well have interpreted the massacre as punishment for the persecution against the Christians in Judea. [11]

Much of scholarship has now come around to arguing against this verses’s inauthenticity and as to the verse being anti Jewish, the “Judains” in 1 Thess is referring to the leaders and Sanhedrin, not the people group. I mean “first, that Paul is negative to Jews; [elsewhere] second, that these verses do not apply to all Jews; and, third, that Ἰουδαῖος has a geographical rather than ethnic meaning in this context.” [12]

With 1 Thess. 2:14-16 out of the way the mythicist paradigm is now free to say about 1 Cor. 2:8, that Paul wasn’t referring to physical, earthly rulers at all, but the ‘Archons of this age’ instead. Archons being the spirit beings that crucified Jesus in the sublunar realm. The word “archon” in Greek is also used elsewhere in the Bible, including Matt 9:18, Acts 4:8, and Acts 7:27, where I think it’s pretty clear that it’s referring to human rulers.

Where the confusion comes in for mythicists is that I definitely find it more plausible to interpret Paul as thinking of cosmic, spiritual powers as the ultimate culprits behind the historical crucifixion of the historical Christ – even if those powers were allying themselves with human political actors. The “Archons” and the human “rulers” are intimately connected. Archons are influencing people.

When you have Paul referring to Jesus over and over again in ways that are extremely difficult to explain on Mythicism, (Galatians 4:3-7, 2 Cor. 5:8, Romans 8:1-8, Romans 9:3-5, Philippians 2:5-11, Gal 1:29; Rom. 1:3; Rom 15:8; 1 Cor 2:8 and, most of all, 1 Cor 11:23-26!). All of those pieces of evidence stack up in favor of historicity. All of that stuff adds up and requires a lot of mental gymnastics to explain away piecemeal on mythicism.

Anyway it’s hard to get around the argument that second Temple Jews only thought real people resurrect, Paul’s letters are all about Jesus’ resurrection QED.

If you liked this post, here’s another one.

Notes:

[1] Chow, Chak Him. “Paul’s Divergence from Jesus’ Prohibition of Divorce in 1 Corinthians 7:10–16” Open Theology 7.1, 2021, p.169.

[2] Samuel Byrskog, “The Historicity of Jesus, How do we know that Jesus existed?” in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, Ed. Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter, , Vol. 3, Part 2, (Brill, 2011), p.2189-2190.

[3] Michael B. Thompson, “Paul and Jesus” in The Oxford handbook in Pauline Studies, Novenson and Matlock (eds), Oxford 2022, ch. 21, p.390.

[4] Samuel Byrskog, The Historicity of Jesus, p.2189-2190.

[5] Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, p.571

[6] Michael B. Thompson, Paul and Jesus, p.389.

[7] Ann Jervis, “Paul the Theologian” in Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies, eds Novonsen and Matlock, Oxford 2022, p. 81

[8] Litwa, M. David, How The Gospels Became History, (2019), p.37-38; Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, (2014), pp.37– 48;

[9] Carrier, Richard, “Pauline Interpolations.” In Hitler Homer Bible Christ, The historical papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013 (Philosopher Press, 2014), pp. 203-11

[10] Jewett, Robert, The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (Foundations and Facets), (Fortress Press 1986), p.37.

[11] Jewett, Robert, The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation, New Testament Studies 17.2, 1971, p.205, fn. 5.

[12] Jensen, Matthew, The (In)authenticity of 1 Thessalonians 2.13-16: A Review of Argument, Currents in Biblical Research 18.1, 2019, pp.59–79, quote at p.70.

Five points need to be stressed with this variant of the Testimonium Flavianum.

1. The arguments here do not accept Eusebius as the initial person to have tampered the TF. Tampering of the TF has happened before and after Eusebius.

2. The passage received by both Eusebius and Pseudo Hegesippus was already tampered with.

3. In examining the TF quote contained in the Excidio, the points of agreement with Eusebius show that both used a tampered passage. (See the bold print in the quote below).

4. How we know Pseudo Hegesippus did not use Eusebius is that he would have used Eusebius phrase that he himself inserted – “He was believed to be Christ” (as evidenced by Jerome).

5. We know the TF was also tampered after Eusebius as the textus receptus has “He was the Christ” yet Whealeys scholarship shows the earlier phrase “he thought to be the Christ” which came from Michael the Syrian which in turn derived from Eusebius. This is similar enough to he was “thought to be the Christ”.

Let us now reproduce the passage in full:

They indeed paid the punishments of their crimes, who after they had crucified Jesus the judge of divine matters, afterwards even persecuted his disciples. However a great part of the Jews, and very many of the gentiles believed in him, since they were attracted by his moral precepts, by works beyond human capability flowing forth. For whom not even his death put an end to their faith and gratitude, on the contrary it increased their devotion. And so they brought in murderous bands and conducted the originator of life to Pilatus to be killed, they began to press the reluctant judge. In which however Pilatus is not absolved, but the madness of the Jews is piled up, because he was not obliged to judge, whom not at all guilty he had arrested, nor to double the sacrilege to this murder, that by those he should be killed who had offered himself to redeem and heal them. About which the Jews themselves bear witness, Josephus a writer of histories saying, that there was in that time a wise man, if it is proper however, he said, to call a man the creator of marvelous works, who appeared living to his disciples after three days of his death in accordance with the writings of the prophets, who prophesied both this and innumerable other things full of miracles about him. From which began the community of Christians and penetrated into every tribe of men nor has any nation of the Roman world remained, which was left without worship of him. If the Jews don’t believe us, they should believe their own people. Josephus said this, whom they themselves think very great, but it is so that he was in his own self who spoke the truth otherwise in mind, so that he did not believe his own words. But he spoke because of loyalty to history, because he thought it a sin to deceive, he did not believe because of stubbornness of heart and the intention of treachery. He does not however prejudge the truth because he did not believe but he added more to his testimony, because although disbelieving and unwilling he did not refuse. In which the eternal power of Jesus Christ shone bright because even the leaders of the synagogue confessed him to be god whom they had seized for death. And truly as god speaking without limitation of persons or any fear of death he announced also the future destruction of the temple. But the damage of the temple did not move them, but because they were chastized by him in scandal and sacrilege, from this their wrath flared up that they should kill him, whom no ages had held. For while others had earned by praying to do what they did, he had it in his power that he could order all things what he wished to be done.

Pseudo-Hegesippus, De excidio 2.12

We can tell that Ps-Hegesippus did not use Eusebius. His Christianised document had “leaders of the synagogue confessed him to be god” and would not have dropped the phrase “he was the Christ”, even a paraphrase would not drop that phrase.

A better explanation is that an already tampered TF was received by both Ps-Hegesippus and Eusebius. This is seen from the points of contact, an example I give below. Realistically Josephus would have called Jesus a pseudo prophet as he did other sign prophets. A new paper of mine sees Jesus as one in a series of sign prophets that Josephus reports about. So this would have initiated a Christian to change this. This tampered passage already had some clever Christian use the Emmaus passage in gospel of Luke to add “for or the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him.” Ps-Hegesippus paraphrase has “the prophets, who prophesied both this and innumerable other things full of miracles about him.”

Here is an extract from my paper: David Allen, A MODEL RECONSTRUCTION OF WHAT JOSEPHUS WOULD HAVE REALISTICALLY WRITTEN ABOUT JESUS, JGRChJ 18 (2022) pp.124-5.

This Christianised Latin adaptation of Josephus’s War is independent of Eusebius. As Paget states,

“The importance of this reference lies in the fact that Pseudo-Hegesippus writes independently of Eusebius. This is made clear by the fact that he refers to Josephus’ account of John the Baptist after the TF, following the Josephan order and not the Eusebian order as we find it in HE, and at an earlier point in the same book (2.4) (cf. Ant. 18.3.4) refers to the Paulina incident which Eusebius never mentions. [43]

De excidio was created out of the Greek War in c. 370 CE, but it is known that this author had direct access to Antiquities, not only from Paget’s points but also from the report of pestilence which followed Herod’s execution of his wife Mariamne (1.38; cf. Ant. 15.7, 9). This paraphrase does not blame Pilate for crucifying Jesus (which could be explained by the general trend of Pseudo-Hegesippus taking the blame off the Romans and placing it onto the Jews) nor does it state that Jesus was the Messiah. ‘It is not easy to see why he should have omitted any reference to Jesus as the Messiah if it was in his version of the received text. After all, he appears to exaggerate the significance of the TF, most blatantly in his claim that even the leaders of the synagogue acknowledged Jesus to be God.’ [44] If the statement ‘he was the Christ’ was in Pseudo-Hegesippus’s received text he would have used that exact phrase. Jerome’s recension had ‘he was believed to be the Christ’ which shows it is earlier than the TF. Jerome’s recension was known to have used Eusebius’s version as Jerome literally copied it from the Historia ecclesiastica. [45] Interestingly, in two manuscripts of Rufinus’s translation of Eusebius’s Historia ecclesiastica, the same phrase is used. [46] Pollard observed, ‘the Latin manuscripts are generally much earlier than the surviving copies of the Greek original, meaning that we need to know the Latin before we can restore Josephus’ Greek.’ [47] The importance of the De excidio usage of the TF is that his received text from Antiquities was prior to Eusebian tampering.

As Nussbaum states,

In De excidio Hierosolymitano 2.12, Pseudo-Hegesippus paraphrases the TF, omitting the statement that Jesus was the Christ. He then vehemently criticises Josephus that he testified of Jesus but did not believe in him as the Christ. It can be concluded that Pseudo-Hegesippus must have read a kind of TF, otherwise he would not have screamed that Josephus did not believe despite his report on Jesus. The situation is reminiscent of Origen writings—he wrote that Josephus did not believe in the messiahship of Jesus. [48]

———————————-

Here are the footnotes from my paper for the extract above:

[43] Paget, ‘Some Observations on Josephus and Christianity’, Journal of Theological Studies, 52/2, Oxford, (2001), pp. 566-67.

[44] Paget, ‘Some Observations’, p. 567.

[45] Jerome used Eusebius’s Historia ecclesiastica when he reproduced the TF: ‘that Eusebius Pamphilus in the ten books of his Church History has been of the utmost assistance’ (Vir. ill. 13). This recension is earlier than the TF. Jerome’s recension has ‘he was believed to be Christ,’ which is what Eusebius wrote into the TF. The other Latin translation De excidio is a paraphrase but what makes this interesting is that he took from a copy of Antiquities before Eusebius tampered with it. It means that one translation of Jerome is before the TF but after Eusebius. The other translation of Ps-Hegesippus is before both the TF and before Eusebius tampering.

[46] See David B. Levenson and Thomas R. Martin, ‘The Latin Translations of Josephus on Jesus, John the Baptist, and James: Critical Texts of the Latin Translation of the Antiquities and Rufinus’ Translation of Eusehius’ Ecclesiastical History Based on Manuscripts and Early Printed Editions’, JSJ 45 (2014), pp. 1-79 (25), who say, ‘By far the most interesting variant in the texts we are discussing is the reading et credebatur esse Christus for Christus hic erat, which is found in two manuscripts of Rufinus currently in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Clm 6383 from the late eighth century and Clm 6381 from the early ninth century.’

[47] Richard M. Pollard, ‘The De excidio of “Hegesippus” and the Reception of Josephus in the Early Middle Ages’, Viator 46 (2015), pp. 65-100 (72).

[48] Johannes Nussbaum, ‘Das Testimonium Flavianum: Ein authentischer Text des Josephus’, NovT 52 (2010), pp. 72-82.