I don’t understand your qualification.

The question is what they did have.

Which we can tell from extant evidence was not that. Because for there to have been that, it should show up in Eusebius’s other two books (among other indications).

To Clarify. my different interpretation theory posits if they DID have TA as we have it. they likely interpreted “He was the Christ” and “who was called Christ” in similar fashion i.e. solely to distinguish him from the other Jesuses.

HI. I actually realized after rereading your article, the other two books (D.E and Th) would logically have to be policed similarly to CH making my scenario much (much) more unlikely and difficult. I’ll gladly abandon it. However I had said this because exactly zero writers before Eusebius are known to have quoted T.F. from Antiquities. Which will remain incredibly fishy to me even with the unlikelihood of my scenario of why that is. another explanation as to why we don’t have any known Christian apologist who used T.F. in any other work is then needed to explain this apparent lack of evidence before Eusebius. Is it at all possible the readers of JA before Eusebius all read the same thing as Eusebius but interpreted it differently than him (I.E. interpreting “He was the Christ” as a Naming convention. Similar to CH20’s “James, the brother of Jesus *who was called Christ*”) to distinguish him from the other Jesuses (many) he discusses…

Origen’s quotation of JA. CH20.. while not quoting CH18 and even expressly saying Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Christ.

I find these three most likely concerning Origen.

1) Either he read the current JA we have and interpreted it differently.. or he read something without a T.A. at all (he goes out of his way, as a Christian wrier in 250s to mention, in relation to Jesus… a passage on JAMES his brother! omitting completely any other apparently existing passage in JA on Jesus during his time) or with a T.A. section much different to anything we can now guess.

That’s ruled out by the same words being in all three separate books of Eusebius. So your scenario requires someone to have hunted down all the manuscripts of each of the other two books and changed them all to agree with the change made to one manuscript of CH (and then of course they had to police every existing manuscript of CH as well to ensure only the one with their reading survived there as well). That’s simply too improbable to be anywhere near as, much less more than, probable as the far simpler scenarios discussed.

…that a scribe of Eusebius’ CH altered his manuscript of Church Histories from an original reading of JA… to “he was the Christ” and this single manuscript, similar to your theory of the Syriac, was copied by multiple scribes, but diverging from your theory, eventually (intentionally) gained more popularity that the (now impossible to determine) originals surrounding it. (Jerome’s Latin and Michael’s Syriac being *attempts* to produce something akin to or claiming to be the original.

I say this because even the writing of CH at the time it was written, by a Religious, and Political leader of the time. His office now (newly) endorsed by the Emperor. writing as soon as the religion had just been endorsed and promoted by Constantine… I would say written in response to this. for the reasons below:

1)the timing of his writing coinciding exactly with Constantine’s conversion.

2)the first appearance of a “Church Histories” (regardless of it’s author) as a direct parallel (even in the author’s eyes) to the many Official “Histories” written by High ranking political, civil and military officials during earlier pagan times…

3) all to varying degrees, these “Histories, were purposely written during the reigns of moderate emperors to ensure survival of any controversial contents.

I think evidence points to a Eusebius who anticipated the triumph of Constantine’s religion over the state… and specifically aspired to have his work remembered, then, as the first of many, state sanctioned histories of the Church.

with this in mind any of his scribes (or anyone else, a higher authority or in an extreme scenario even Eusebius himself) in pandering to the Authorities has more than enough incentive specifically from the 380 Edict, to embellish an original JA with Christian censorship for Eusebius’ CH. after all the work itself is called “Christian Histories” .

I believe you could add one additional detail. There is also an Armenian translation of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History made in the early fifth century by Mesrop Mashtots (died in 441) from the Syriac translation, which therefore must have been available already at that time. The Armenian version reads: ”∙Քրիստոս իսկ է նա.” I don’t know Armenian but Քրիստոս means Christ; իսկ means and, but, moreover, as in this case indeed, truly; է is a verb, then the third person singular present tense of եմ, i.e. is; նա means he, she or it. Accordingly it says: “Christ indeed is he”, or rather: ”he is indeed/truly Christ/Messiah.” This translation is confirmed in personal letters by Robert Bedrosian who writes: “The literal sense of the sentence is this: ‘Indeed, He is the one who is the Christ.’”; and by Bert Vaux who writes: “I would translate it literally as ‘he is indeed Christ’.”

The matter of accuracy was to be clearer and more precise about how a corruption in a single Greek manuscript would explain both Jerome’s Latin and only one Syriac tradition containing that corruption. There are many actual ways that can have happened (from the one lost but clearly aberrant Syriac Chronicler making his many emendations to the Syriac by checking the earlier Syriac translations against his own available Greek exemplar—which would then be a descendant of the exemplar used by Jerome—to that Chronicler having a Syriac manuscript that contained a marginal note on this same point and then incorporating that variant into his own edition; and many other possibilities beyond), but digressing on everye one would be tedious, and unnecessary to the point here established.