Josephus - Is It Reliable?

[SkepticalDaniel]

Is Josephus's account about Jesus real, or is it a forgery?

[Jeff]

Pretty well debunked as a later addition I believe.

Dates don't line up being one of the issues.

 

You a bible infallibility person? Bart Ehrman's books might help you. I see your posts here and I can see you need positive reinforcement to help with your fears.

Also there's a good thread here with multiple parts dealing with how the Romans viewed original Christians. They were a sad lot.

[SkepticalDaniel]

Pretty well debunked as a later addition I believe.

Dates don't line up being one of the issues.

 

You a bible infallibility person? Bart Ehrman's books might help you. I see your posts here and I can see you need positive reinforcement to help with your fears.

Also there's a good thread here with multiple parts dealing with how the Romans viewed original Christians. They were a sad lot.

If it's pretty well debunked, then why do Christians still use it?

[Blood]

That's kind of like asking, "If the earth is older than 6,000 years, then why do people still read the Bible?" 

 

They don't care if reality intrudes on their fantasy football games. They will just insist louder that their fantasy is the "real" reality. 

[Jeff]

 

Pretty well debunked as a later addition I believe.

Dates don't line up being one of the issues.

 

You a bible infallibility person? Bart Ehrman's books might help you. I see your posts here and I can see you need positive reinforcement to help with your fears.

Also there's a good thread here with multiple parts dealing with how the Romans viewed original Christians. They were a sad lot.

If it's pretty well debunked, then why do Christians still use it?

I don't think Christians research these things too much and rely on their leaders. Many that do end up here and elsewhere. Many just plain refuse to beleive anything contrary.

[qadeshet]

I'll let Richard Carrier have the last word on the Testimonium.

 

The Josephus Testimonium: Let's Just Admit it's Fake Already.

 

A new article just beats this dead horse deader still. Hat tip to Vridar and Peter Kirby. Honestly. The evidence that the Testimonium Flavianum (or TF) is entirely a late Christian forgery is now as overwhelming as such evidence could ever get. Short of uncovering a pre-Eusebian manuscript, which is not going to happen. All extant manuscripts derive from the single manuscript of Eusebius; evidently everything else was decisively lost.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Usually those who want to rebut Carrier make a big deal of attacking his character and the fact that he does not hold a professorial job in a university.  He is trained as an ancient historian and publishes in refereed venues.

[sdelsolray]

Carrier is a fresh voice in what traditionally has been a fairly closed group of scholars.  Many of his arguments/points do indeed challenge what many of those scholars considered settled.

[quinntar]

Is Josephus's account about Jesus real, or is it a forgery?

It doesn't say much of anything Dan, it's pretty weak evidence of the life of Jesus. Besides Christians shouldn't be trusting it either, since it's not apart of God's word.

[Guest Furball]

We also know that josephus died as a jewish believer who never believed that jesus was the messiah. It was a forgery added in by later christians. If josephus really believed, then why did he never say a single thing about jesus afterward, or convert to christianity?

 

Only ignorant people who don't check the facts are still using this one. 

[★ Citsonga ★]

As others have already said, it is indeed clearly a forgery.

 

Even when I was a Christian, the Testimonium Flavianum was a bit of a red flag for me. After all, Josephus never became a Christian, so it makes no sense that he would write such a glowing, praise-induced account of Jesus and yet refuse to accept him as his savior. As a believer I was unaware of the possibility of it being interpolated, so I wrote if off as a strange anomaly, but it was indeed rather puzzling. Now I can see that it is evidence not of Jesus, but of Christians tampering with the text.

 

By the way, even Christian apologists now admit that the Testimonium could not have been entirely written by Josephus. Lee Strobel discusses that in his Case for Christ book. Of course, as a Jesus advocate, he does what many Christians do and tries to "rescue" parts of the Testimonum as legitimate, while discarding the ultra-praisy stuff. However, once it's known that the text was tampered with, trying to salvage any portion of the passage without any documentation of any of it being legit is nothing more than speculation that's convenient for those desperate to come up with contemporary non-Christian "evidence" of Jesus.

 

Also, speaking of "contemporary," Josephus really wasn't. He was born after Jesus supposedly ascended to heaven, so he could not have been a witness to anything about Jesus. He wrote about that time-frame many decades later, so even if he had written the Testimonium, the stories of Jesus had had plenty of time to be circulated and exaggerated by Christians, and those exaggerated stories would have been his source of information.

 

In summary, Josephus as "evidence" of Jesus is bunk.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Ken Olson, who had published on the TF before, has this recent treatment:

 

http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5871

 

He argues that Eusebius monkeyed with the text.

 

Another problem with the TF is that it appears in a list of "calamities that befell the Jews" during the governorship of Pilate. There were various messianic pretenders who got snuffed. It seems not plausible that Josephus should include the execution of one of them among legitimate "calamities," which were massacres of groups of Jews by Romans.

[Blood]

None of this matters. Theologians are never going to let go of the TF. Their careers depend upon it being "authentic." 

[Justin]

 

Pretty well debunked as a later addition I believe.

Dates don't line up being one of the issues.

You a bible infallibility person? Bart Ehrman's books might help you. I see your posts here and I can see you need positive reinforcement to help with your fears.

Also there's a good thread here with multiple parts dealing with how the Romans viewed original Christians. They were a sad lot.

If it's pretty well debunked, then why do Christians still use it?

Like with most things, Christians tend not to check too deeply into their own beliefs. At best, they simply parrot things they've heard or read on some apologetics site.

[SkepticalDaniel]

 

 

Pretty well debunked as a later addition I believe.

Dates don't line up being one of the issues.

You a bible infallibility person? Bart Ehrman's books might help you. I see your posts here and I can see you need positive reinforcement to help with your fears.

Also there's a good thread here with multiple parts dealing with how the Romans viewed original Christians. They were a sad lot.

If it's pretty well debunked, then why do Christians still use it?

Like with most things, Christians tend not to check too deeply into their own beliefs. At best, they simply parrot things they've heard or read on some apologetics site.

I can believe that for sure.

[TerranceG]

 

Pretty well debunked as a later addition I believe.

Dates don't line up being one of the issues.

 

You a bible infallibility person? Bart Ehrman's books might help you. I see your posts here and I can see you need positive reinforcement to help with your fears.

Also there's a good thread here with multiple parts dealing with how the Romans viewed original Christians. They were a sad lot.

If it's pretty well debunked, then why do Christians still use it?

I've been very interested in that very question. Much of my post secondary education is in the field of psychology, and in pondering this question I've had a few realizations.

 

One is that different personality types have different needs. Those of us who are prone to seek a clearer and better picture of what is real and true need to grow our pool of knowledge. We require new concepts and information just like we require food and water.

 

But...a number of individuals (the actual percentage is debatable) seem to have more need of acceptance and inclusion in social groups. For those people, having a clear picture of things is less important than feeling accepted by the groups that they value.

 

Truth becomes relative and conformity inevitable in that situation. Even very intelligent Christan scholars who know all of the weaknesses of the text and other ancient sources will go to great lengths to preserve their belief.