This statement is false as far as early manuscript references in Josephus are concerned. As far as I can ascertain the references to Jesus in Josephus are found in the oldest Greek manuscripts of Josephus' Antiquities.youkrst wrote:
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The references to Jesus by Josephus found in the Antiquities of the Jews Book 18 and Book 20 of the Antiquities do not appear in any other versions of Josephus' The Jewish War except for a Slavonic version of the Testimonium Flavianum (at times called Testimonium Slavonium) which surfaced in the west at the beginning of the 20th century, after its discovery in Russia at the end of the 19th century.[6][7]
There is no scholarly dispute whatsoever on the authenticity of the reference in Josephus to James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ.
Who is the author of your quote Youkrst? Origen also quotes Josephus here very early.
http://www.bede.org.uk/Josephus.htm
What exactly is the point here? That one manuscript has a slightly different spelling for Christians which was changed to mean what,Christians? How does that change it's meaning and what about all the other manuscripts?youkrst wrote:Quote:
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
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Tacitus is clearly hostile to Christianity and it certainly doesn't read like something that would be written by any Christian.
You guys are far too dependent on the interpolations defense including with the N.T for it to be credible.
Guys like Carrier are out on a limb for good reasons. The people who specialize in these fields disagree and give reasons for their conclusions.
Carrier was seduced by Doherty's thesis and wants to believe he is right on Tacitus and Josephus. He mangles the N.T. so I wouldn't have confidence in his use of Tacitus or Josephus.
In fact he tries to say that Josephus is referring to Jesus the son of Damneus, but scholars have demonstrated why this is a mishandling of the text grammatically, and in terms of Josephus universal practice of distinguishing between people of the same name.
That's why it's James the brother of Jesus called Christ,and Jesus the son of Damneus in this very passage.
Add to that the references to Jesus having a brother called James in the gospels and Paul's reference to James the brother of the Lord in Galatians,and it's far more reasonable to take the historicist view.
Well of course the apostles were eyewitnesses,and if you took the view that only contemporaries could do this you could never do history, but serious historians don't accept this notion. And Josephus wasn't that much later in any case. He was contemporaneous with Luke and they often record the same events.youkrst wrote:Quote:
"......What is a good source? A contemporary historian -- that is to say, an historian that lived and wrote during the time in which Christ is said to have lived. Any historian living or writing after that time could not have seen the events with his own eyes -- possibly could not have even known any witnesses personally. Any historian writing decades or centuries after the events could only write of those things which he had heard others say. In other words, he would be writing hearsay -- secondhand accounts of what Christ's followers said about him.