A German academic reference book appeared in 2017 titled Jesus Handbuch (more or less meaning “Jesus Handbook” or the Jesus Manual) edited by Jens Schröter and Christine Jacobi (you can access its table of contents and descriptive foreword at Mohr Siebeck). It’s largely useless for the historicity debate because it never even questions the assumption that Jesus existed, never addresses challenges to historicity in any fashion, and though written in the mainstream tradition that admits much of what we know of Jesus is mythical (this isn’t gullible Christian apologetics), all its entries still assume without evidence that anything each contributing author wants to be true about Jesus, was. Pretty much exactly everything that’s wrong about Jesus studies today. So there’s no use in reviewing it. It’s just “stock mainstream assumption mongering” that builds a Jesus out of speculations and calls it fact. No further comment required really.
Perhaps the only entries in it that are even interesting are the two chapters by Steve Mason covering the extra-biblical sources, which is particularly relevant as he is a noted expert in Josephan studies, who really believes Josephus discussed Jesus and James in the Antiquities. Mason provides an English translation of that section at Academia.edu. But that actually adds an introduction not in the Handbuch. In that Mason mentions doubt of historicity and affirms it should be taken seriously, though he never goes into any of the actual basis for those doubts or why historicity should be affirmed over them. He shows no awareness of my peer reviewed historical work in On the Historicity of Jesus or Proving History, the very thing he asks for here, yet inexplicably thinks hasn’t been done yet. For example, Mason asks a bunch of rhetorical questions on page 3 that are answered in those works, as if he has no idea; and he likewise says things that are weirdly false, like that “the Christ-myth side downplays the diversity of early Christ-following,” which is literally exactly the opposite of the truth—that early sectarian diversity is actually a significant component of our case. And none of this is in the Handbuch.
Here I will examine what’s in the Handbuch and in particular the only point at which he even mentions me, which is in reaction to my article in JECS (Journal of Early Christian Studies) on the James passage in Josephus (which you can now most affordably access, along with all my other peer reviewed research in history up to 2014, in my book Hitler Homer Bible Christ).
Extrabiblical Sources
Mason admits the extrabiblical evidence is sparse and problematic, affirming pretty much the same positions I take in Chapter 8 of OHJ. His brief on Mara bar Serapion is probably the most useful succinct explanation of why it’s useless as a source. He notes why it’s as likely as not late and derivative and thus does not attest anything independently of the Gospels. Mason’s treatment of Suetonius is likewise the most useful succinct explanation of why it’s also useless as a source. He notes nothing in Suetonius can be reliably connected even to Jesus, much less a historical Jesus (as opposed to just a “preached Jesus,” which would be indistinguishable from a revealed one).
Mason’s treatment of Tacitus is perhaps overly brief. He doesn’t seem aware of my article in Vigiliae Christianae questioning the authenticity of the important line linking Christ to Pilate, nor of any of the other scholars’ peer reviewed doubts of it (contrast his treatment with that of Van Voorst, which predates my article but is at least cognizant of the doubting tradition). But I don’t rely on that conclusion anyway; like Mason, my point is that the most likely channel by which Tacitus would learn that information (if ever he did write it) was Christians (indeed most likely through his friend Pliny), who learned it from their Gospels. It is thus not independent information.
Mason never clarifies the importance of establishing a source’s independence before we can employ it to any conclusion; but he does more cryptically acknowledge this passage “adds nothing material” to what we know about Jesus. There is no evidence Tacitus fact-checked this claim; from his perspective it was too deliciously embarrassing to need question it. Ultimately, Mason is ambivalent as to its utility. He says only that Tacitus clearly thought the information “was credible,” but not why, or how that helps us any as historians. By contrast, Mason more directly (and correctly) dismisses Lucian of Samosata’s reference to Jesus as providing “no independent information” to work with.
That’s all Mason surveys, apart from Josephus whom he gets to in the next section. He evidently doesn’t consider any other Non-Christian references to Jesus as relevant (I concur).
Josephus on John the Baptist?
Mason begins with what I consider an inept claim that doesn’t pertain to Jesus, but John the Baptist: he asserts that Josephus’s treatment of the latter “shows no hint of Christian colouring.” I beg to differ (as have others, who go even further than I do, e.g. Nicholas Allen and Rivka Nir and beyond). It can hardly be doubted that Christians altered this account to erase something they found offensive about it—which does actually prove Josephus wrote the rest of it; meddlers wouldn’t have to “fix” a text they composed. In our extant manuscripts we have this explanation of why Herod had John liquidated:
Some of the Jews thought Herod’s army was destroyed by God, and quite justly, to avenge John, the one called the Baptist. Because Herod killed him, despite his being a good man who called upon the Jews to exercise virtue, and to be just to one another and show reverence toward God; and they sought to go and be baptized. For in exactly this way one receiving the baptism appeared to him not to be obtaining a payment for their sinful deeds, but for purification of the body, inasmuch as the soul was already completely purified by righteousness. And when others united around him—for they were also very delighted at hearing his words—Herod feared he had so much influence over the people that he might bring about a rebellion (for they seemed willing to do anything he advised). So he thought it best to kill him before [that happened].
The material I have placed in bold cannot possibly have been written by Josephus. It is quite clearly a Christian apologetic, filled with obscure Christian theological concepts, attempting to combat the heretical notion (only of interest to Christians, not Josephus) that John was remitting sins through baptism, and thus anyone could do so—thus negating any need for belief in Christ. Josephus has absolutely no interest in any of the esoteric concepts here, and even if for some strange reason he would add such an irrelevant digression in defense of some sort of unidentified orthodoxy, he would have explained what any of this meant and why he needed to say it here. Why is Josephus talking about baptism paying for sins? He never said that’s what a baptism was. He hasn’t explained why anyone would care that it did, or even why it’s important to assert that it did not; nor is there any reason in this story to mention either. These are all Christian concerns. They were hardly of interest to Josephus in telling this story, and they would be completely inexplicable to his intended Gentile audience. Only a Christian would not need any of this explained; Josephus, would explain them, or not mention them at all. And that’s how we know he did not write that sentence.
Mason makes this same mistake again more relevantly when he gets to discussing my case against Josephus connecting any James to Christ. This is a common mistake made by historians of Josephus, who don’t seem to notice how this one bizarre sentence makes zero sense coming from his hand. Because they tend to be Christians too (or raised in a Christian tradition or trained in a Christianized culture), and thus take for granted the Christian meaning and intent of the sentence, and don’t stop to realize Josephus wouldn’t—nor would his intended audience, as Josephus would well know. That’s why he always explains esoteric points of Jewish doctrine in the Antiquities. So that he doesn’t here is conclusive evidence he didn’t write this sentence. Clearly he went directly from “they would go to be baptized” to “and others united around him.”
It’s possible there was some other sentence here, wherein Josephus explained what a baptism was in a way that would make sense to Gentile ears. But Josephus would not really need to explain the purpose of the water ritual after which John was named. That’s all the word means in Greek after all, and water initiation rituals would be a religious concept already familiar to any Gentile reader. So the reason for this baptism isn’t relevant to the story Josephus is telling, only that it was a religious practice many Jews were flocking to, distinctive enough for John to be named after it, and popular enough to worry Herod. Either way, that a Christian felt the need to interject this doctrinal assertion in the middle of Josephus’s story is evidence Josephus did indeed write the rest of this story. Had the entire entry on John been Christian, it would align with the Gospels in several ways it currently doesn’t, and would have had no need of interjected lines like this.
I mention all this because of the way it illustrates how historians like Mason don’t pay attention to what these passages looked like in their original context. They aren’t doing history properly here, but anachronistically. They aren’t checking their assumptions; and in result they are overlooking obvious problems with the evidence. This will come up again.
Josephus on Jesus?
Mason says very little about the Testimonium Flavianum (or TF). He seems to struggle with his conclusion, as if he doesn’t want it to be the case that “of the three main options—Josephus wrote the whole passage, or none of it, or some but not all—majority opinion has settled on the diplomatic middle ground” but “some scholars still find a Jesus-free Josephus most compelling,” citing solely Olson’s 2013 study, even though he should be citing several recent devastating critiques of the “partial TF” thesis (see my summary in Josephus on Jesus: Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014). It’s as if Mason just lazily picked one example of the position he doesn’t like, rather than do his duty to summarize the latest scholarship. So we get no mention of Goldberg 1995, Whealey 2008, Feldman 2012, Hopper 2014, or Carrier 2014; even though collectively they make a pretty powerful case against what Mason deems “majority opinion.”
This matters because, for example, most of the scholars Mason might list as forming that “majority opinion” based that opinion in significant part on the argument from the Arabic Testimonium; but in 2008 Whealey proved that derived from Eusebius and not Josephus, thus destroying the entire basis for their opinion. It also matters because at this point Mason goes off the rails of all logical sense when trying to defend the James passage in Josephus as wholly authentic.
Here Mason weirdly argues that “every part of the James passage makes decent sense” if we take it “in the larger context of Antiquities, if Josephus has recently referred to a man known as Christos.” Yet Mason just got finished arguing Josephus cannot have used the word Christos in the TF. You heard that right. He flatly contradicts himself. Mason likewise says this “second passage appears to assume” the TF. But it doesn’t. The TF never mentions Jesus having a brother or Christians being persecuted or teaching anything about giving up Torah law. So in fact the James passage does the exact opposite of “assuming the TF.” It seems connected to it in no way at all. Indeed, the James passage doesn’t even say James was a Christian or that that’s why he was killed. It doesn’t say any Christians were killed. So why would Mason say something exactly contrary to the truth? He does not seem to have a functioning epistemology here. Logic, not his game.
It gets worse than this. Because when Josephus assumes one passage relates to another, he says so. And yet that is precisely what he doesn’t do here. So in fact this is actually evidence against this passage having anything to do with the TF, or any other passage in Josephus that explained anything in it—with the one exception proving this very point: Josephus assumes this passage relates to the other where he explained the proclivities of Sadducees. How do we know that? Because he says so. As Mason himself admits, in this very passage Josephus mentions his previous discussion of the Sadducees when explaining the murderous behavior of Ananus, a Sadducee, toward this James. So if it were also relevant that James was a Christian, and Josephus had mentioned Christians, Josephus would have said so. He doesn’t. And that’s how we know Josephus never wrote the words “called Christ” in this passage. This passage was never about Christians. That was an addition made (probably accidentally) by Christian scribes copying this text centuries later.
I cannot fathom why Mason does not see this. His own premises entail the opposite conclusion from the one he is reaching. If, as Mason says, Josephus cross references strange terms to explain why they are coming up or are relevant to a story, then he would do so here; Josephus does cross reference strange terms to explain why they are coming up or are relevant to a story; and yet, no such explanation appears here; ergo, Josephus cannot have written the word “Christ” in the James passage, and cannot have meant James was being killed because he was a Christian. Note even a back reference to the TF would not accomplish that—as, again, the TF neither mentions a James or that Jesus had a brother or that any brother of his was a Christian or even that Jewish leaders continued trying to kill Christians, much less why. In other words, Mason’s own premises logically entail that Josephus did not write the James passage about Christ or Christians even if he wrote the TF (and he didn’t). Instead, Mason goes exactly against all logic and sense. Why?
The weirdest thing is that Mason knows this. He admits in this same entry for the Handbuch that Josephus is “careful otherwise to explain Hebrew concepts to his audiences, realizing that they will not understand traditional language.” You know. Hebrew concepts like the word Christ in the James passage, Mason’s own example. Or other “Hebrew concepts”—like that this Christian sect of the Jews preached something Sadducees wanted to have them executed for, which not even the TF explains. But even apart from that obvious hole in his argument, Mason had just finished arguing from this indisputably correct premise that Josephus cannot have written the word “Christ” in the TF. But that exact same argument entails Josephus cannot have written the word “Christ” in the James passage either.
Why is Mason hypocritically accepting this argument for the TF, then suddenly completely forgetting about it when discussing the James passage? This is extremely bizarre behavior from a historian. The correct argument is obviously the first one: Josephus would never use that word without explaining it or cross-referencing to where he explained it. And that means the fact that he didn’t do either in the James passage entails he did not write the word “Christ” in the James passage. Once you accept Mason’s own, demonstrably correct premise, there is no other rational conclusion.
Indeed Mason appears to outright shirk his responsibility as a historian, and indeed historical logic altogether, when he argues by analogy in defense of it making sense for Josephus to only briefly say “Jesus, called Christ” in the James passage without explanation. It is “not unusual,” Mason says, for Josephus “to identify a person or place and then add a second name with legomenos: ‘called X’.” Mason then gives four examples from the Antiquities. But every one of those examples illustrates why Josephus can’t have done that here: in 4.82, Josephus explains why he is saying “called X”: we need to know the name of a city had changed from Arce to Petra; in 8.100, Josephus explains why he is saying “called X”: we need to know a Jewish month is called by the Macedonians something else; in 1.123, Josephus explains why he is saying “called X”: we need to know a tribe used to be called one thing, but now is called something else; in 2.6, Josephus explains why he is saying “called X”: we need to know which part of Idumea he is talking about.
Notice how none of these examples fit the usage found in the James passage: Josephus does not there explain why we need to know Jesus is called Christ. Thus none of Mason’s examples support his argument; to the contrary, they are so different from this instance that they actually argue to the contrary conclusion: Josephus did not write “called Christ” in this passage. These examples show he would have explained why if he had. Even the one example Mason gives from Josephus’s autobiography (Life 4) is part of a series of sentences in which Josephus makes clear he is giving both known names of the persons he lists who had two names—actual names, not titles or epithets or descriptions. That it’s made clear what he is doing, again explains why he does that. No such explanation is available in the James passage. So even this example does not support Mason’s argument. So why does he think it does? Did he not even check these examples, but just run a search for legomenos and assume the results list would support him? Why?
The illogical arguments continue. Mason argues that “the order of his identifiers” in the James passage “suggests that he chooses James as representative of the condemned group because he is ‘the brother of the one called [or known as] Christos’, already known to the audience.” But that’s not true. Josephus would say that if that’s what he meant. Instead he never says anyone in this story is a Christian, he never says anywhere that Jewish leaders wanted to execute Christians, and he certainly never says anywhere why they did. He also never explains what a “Christ” was or what it meant to be one, and he never refers us to anywhere else that was explained (and remember, as Mason himself points out, it’s not even explained in the TF). So no. The order of identifiers does not suggest any of these things. That goes completely contrary to logic and Josephus’s repeatedly demonstrated practice—a practice even Mason affirms. The opposite is the case: it is precisely because Josephus does not explain any of these things that he cannot have meant any of these things. Those two words, “called Christ,” must therefore have come from a hand not his.
It is at this point, after all these bizarre failures of logic that Mason mentions my 2012 research paper for JECS. Mason says “an ingenious proposal by R. Carrier holds that Josephus wrote about a different but also important James, brother of a different Jesus,” the Jesus son of Damneus mentioned at the end of this very story. Mason doesn’t explain what my thesis actually is, but in that article I show why we can expect Josephus either assumed the way he concludes this story would render it obvious this was the same Jesus meant, and centuries later a Christian interlinear note came to be interpolated instead, or else Josephus originally wrote “the brother of Jesus, son of Damneus” and centuries later a Christian scribe assumed an error of dittography had occurred and replaced “son of Damneus” with an interlinear note “called Christ” that they mistook for an indicated correction (a kind of error I show was common in ancient scribal practice).
Here Mason ignores every argument in my article, and weirdly claims I proposed that this James was “an otherwise unattested chief priest named James.” Nowhere in my article do I propose this James was a priest at all, much less chief priest, nor can I fathom why anyone would think that’s what Josephus meant. The only priest connected with this James is the Jesus appointed chief priest to replace the very Ananus who executed his brother—as punishment for doing so. Mason also gets the theory wrong: he says I propose the mere conjunction of James and Jesus “inspired a fairly early Christian copyist to turn this James into the brother of Jesus Christ.” Wrong. I propose this happened by accident, not by intention. And I provide a well-evidenced reason for it happening, too. Mason seems completely unaware of what that reason was, or even what my article’s thesis is. Why?
Further illustrating Mason’s stalwart refusal to even read the article or know any of its arguments, he tries to argue “against” its thesis in the most bizarre way yet (emphasis now mine):
Carrier’s reconstruction, brilliant though it is, creates more problems than it solves. It would not explain the allegation of law-observance (a live issue in early Christianity, in which James was reportedly implicated [Acts 21:17–26; cf. Gal 6:12]), the men condemned along with James, the reported reaction from other members of the elite to this breach of due process, or the prospect of a high priest’s exceeding his authority ‘in judgements/court cases’—not against elite rivals. The most economical explanation of the text in Antiquities 20 is that Josephus had written about a Jesus called Christos in Book 18, which he could therefore use as a reference point to explain why he singled out this Yakob among Ananus’ victims: he was the brother of that Jesus mentioned earlier.
Holy Bat Man. Where to even begin. I already noted Mason is wrong about pretty much everything here: Mason himself said the TF did not mention the word Christ nor would have without explaining it; in fact the TF does not say any of the things Mason now claims it would “explain” about this James passage—so, in fact, it is Mason’s theory that would not explain any of those things! Do you know what theory does explain every single one of these things? Mine. Why does Mason not know that?
- First, “these are Christians” does not explain “the reported reaction from other members of the elite.” In fact that is one of the arguments I make (in the article Mason claims to be responding to) against the “Christ” reference here coming from Josephus. Why would the Jewish elite almost unanimously be outraged by the execution of Christians? By contrast, illegally executing the brother of a man in contention for the high priesthood sure would provoke that reaction.
- Second, there is no allegation about law-observance in this James passage; Josephus simply said they were accused of breaking the law, like literally any other criminal (what laws, even if they were guilty, is completely irrelevant to Josephus’s story—which is the only plausible reason why he doesn’t discuss either); whereas if what Josephus meant was “Christians promoted abandoning Torah law and therefore some Jewish leaders wanted them convicted and executed for this,” that’s what Josephus would have said. So that he didn’t say it, confirms he didn’t mean it. Mason is literally inventing facts that don’t exist here; and then arguing that Josephus would act entirely contrary to how Mason himself argues Josephus would act.
- Third, “they were Christians” does not explain “the prospect of a high priest’s exceeding his authority” at all. What does explain it is Josephus—because he gives us the explanation: Ananus was a Sadducee and was especially strict and cruel even for a Sadducee. No further explanation is required than the one Josephus gave. So why is Mason acting like it’s “not explained”? Why is he acting like his theory would even explain it? Neither makes any sense.
- Fourth, the only reason Josephus mentions others were killed should be too obvious to require mentioning: because that’s what happened, and Josephus is a historian.
What’s really weird about Mason’s argument here is that there is no evidence any James agreed with giving up Torah law; by all accounts every James we know was part of Peter’s faction, not Paul’s. Mason even cites passages in Acts and Galatians demonstrating James was part of the pro-Torah faction (there is a typo here: he meant Galatians 2:12, not 6:12). So there can be no doubt which James Mason thinks Josephus is writing about. Mason weirdly frames this as “James was reportedly implicated” in the Torah observance dispute; but his argument requires James to be on the side of abandoning Torah observance, when Mason’s own sources plainly say he was on the side of preserving Torah observance.
So Mason has literally invented a fact contrary to all known evidence (that James was teaching the abandoning of Torah) in order to argue this is a passage about Christians. What kind of history is he doing? You don’t get to make stuff up, and then claim it as fact, then use the fact you just made up as “evidence” for your conclusion—at all, much less when all the actual evidence, even your own cited evidence, is of exactly the opposite fact: every first-century Christian James we know was Torah observant. Nor does this passage in Josephus nor any passage in the Bible say this James “took the heat” for the position he actually opposed. That’s another completely made-up fact nowhere in evidence nor plausibly inferable anywhere, where exactly the opposite should be expected (e.g. if Josephus meant such a bizarre, convoluted thing, he would definitely have explained it). So here, again, Mason has abandoned all rational historical methodology. Why?
Finally, for the TF (not the James passage) Mason makes an argument that reveals he has not studied how forgeries get detected in every field of the humanities: “It is easier to believe,” Mason claims, “that Josephus himself wrote” a passage that appears to mimic much of his style, “and that it was adjusted from the fourth century onward than that” some “forger was diligent enough to search out Josephus’ style and apply” it “to this passage—while carelessly leaving a couple of tell-tale Eusebianisms in the passage.” Dr. Mason, when all we have is a reproduced text, that is literally how every forger in history has been detected. That’s exactly the mistake they always make. If you don’t know this, I recommend getting up to speed: read Author Unknown by David Foster; Detecting Forgery by Joe Nickell; and Forging History by Kenneth Rendell. Never mind that the thing you just claimed was refuted by Olson in 2013—the very study you yourself cited.
Dead Horse
Let’s look at all the arguments Mason just ignored, despite completely refuting his position:
In addition to all that—which is all in the JECS article Mason didn’t read and in On the Historicity of Jesus which Mason didn’t read—also in both I additionally argue:
- (1) this James narrative in Josephus substantially contradicts every other account of the death of any known Christian James, corresponding in no significant way with any of them;
- (2) as Luke used the Antiquities of Josephus for background material, this story would be in Acts were it in Josephus, ergo it wasn’t—because had it been, including it would have handed a rhetorical coup to Luke’s every established apologetic aim: it depicts Romans (and Herod Agrippa himself) punishing Jews for persecuting Christians (and even if Luke didn’t use Josephus, it’s inconceivable Josephus knew more about recent Christian history, particularly the fate of this James, than Luke did); and
- (3) Origen has no knowledge of this passage, despite being intimately familiar with Josephus and citing him often, specifically to establish or answer historical facts about Jesus against his critics (Origen also has no knowledge of the TF).
That last point is what the rest of my JECS article demonstrates. And yet that fact alone is devastating to any thesis that Josephus wrote the words “called Christ,” here or anywhere in his writings. Indeed, only Origen ever writes the phrase (entirely his own words) “James the brother of Jesus called Christ,” and exactly the same way on three different occasions (note on the table above: that’s not how the line appears in Josephus). Indeed, on two of those occasions, Origen writes even more specifically “James the Just the brother of Jesus called Christ,” despite there being no “James the Just” anywhere in Josephus, but only in Hegesippus, whose account of the death of James does match what Origen incorrectly claims to be in Josephus—a fact too improbable to be a coincidence. I even show Origen confused Christian sources for Josephus on other occasions as well. [This argument can even be strengthened by counterfactual.]
So why on earth would anyone trust the two words “called Christ” were originally in Josephus here? I cannot think of a rational reason left to do so. Mason cannot refute this barrage of facts; so he just ignores it.
Conclusion
I see a trend here. Mason just ignores every argument for a position he doesn’t like, in every case (mine; Olson’s; anyone else’s). And then he just picks a theory he wants to be true, makes up a bunch of facts nowhere in evidence or even contrary to the evidence, and gives no rational arguments for any of that. He even blatantly contradicts himself—like giving a cogent and indisputably correct argument for why the TF cannot have contained the word “Christ,” then a paragraph later defending the James passage containing that word as evidence for the TF; when in fact the first argument refutes the second. Mason thus refutes himself and doesn’t even notice (or doesn’t care?).
A scholar who shows himself stubbornly disinterested in even mentioning much less addressing arguments to the contrary of any position he holds, arguments in the very article he claims to be rebutting even, and who makes facts up in defense of his position, made-up facts often even contrary to real facts, uses no discernible logical reasoning in arriving at his conclusions, doesn’t pay attention to his own cited examples, doesn’t keep up with the latest research in the subject they are writing a handbook entry on, and says things exactly the opposite of established science (such as his ignorant remark about how forgeries tend to be constructed), is a scholar I think no one should ever pay attention to again. Because, honestly, after all that, how can we say he has any useful or credible opinion in the matter?
Typos: Seventh paragraph, last line, “Nonchristian” should be “non-Christian.” Last paragraph, line one, “disinterested” should be “uninterested.”
(1) What does “the order of his identifiers” mean?
(2) What are the titles of “Goldberg 1995, Whealey 2008, Feldman 2012, Hopper 2014, or Carrier 2014?”
(3) Mention of Hitler Homer Bible Christ in this article reminds me: it’s a brilliant book—fascinating and informative.
Disinterested is a synonym of uninterested.
Mason means by “the order of his identifiers” the order in which people are identified in the passage (“the brother” “of Jesus” “the name for whom was James” “and some others”)
And the meaning of those citations is explained in the link they are listed after.
Disinterested is not a synonym of uninterested. I have a degree in English linguistics, so don’t even bother with your uneducated opinion here Carrier.
Your opinions on English are about as bad as your history.
Evidently your degree did not teach you what the word “synonym” means (as in, what you’ll find in a Thesaurus) or how to use a Dictionary.
Weird. You’d think a linguistics degree would have covered those subjects.
I suggest you bone up on another word, it’s a word in linguistics: valency.
This use of the word ‘disinterested’ unsettles some language experts. They would claim it is not synonymous. In their eyes, disinterested means ‘impartial’ or ‘unbiased’ whereas uninterested means ‘not taking an interest in’, ‘unconcerned about’ or ‘uninvolved with’.
Other experts argue that the words are interchangeable. They quote an example of John Donne from the 17th century.
I believe in precision though, so I am sympathetic to Barry Rucker’s objection.
As is the case for many synonyms, there isn’t a complete identity. Disinterested tends to suggest more no “interest” in the sense of a stake, monetary or otherwise, such as for the sake of winning an argument. Uninterested tends to suggest more no “interest” in the sense of being bored by the subject. It seems to me that Carrier made the slightly better choice in this case, though as he acknowledges “uninterested” would also suffice.
I suppose this goes to show how going grammar Nazi can add heat, not light? But, sorry, I can’t help it.
That distinction has long lapsed in practice anyway. By convention now the contextual valency of “disinterested” now establishes it as a synonym of “uninterested.” That usage is typically listed as the second most common use of “disinterested” in any current dictionary of American English.
‘Disinterested’ in skolarly usage means ‘not biast; not prejudiced’. Hasn’t lapst at all.
It’s only loose careless uneducatid speech that has ‘disinterested’ as uninterested; ‘enormity’ the same as ‘enormousness’; ‘snuck’ as preterite of ‘sneakt’.
Citing any 14th century counter example a la Pinkr dusn’t settl it.
I notist Dr Carrier’s got an anti-snob chip on his shoulder wishing t’ get wurds like ‘suck’ or ‘different than’ or ‘like he does’ intu serius academic discourse.
Alif, check any contemporary dictionary: every one says the second most common usage of disinterested is as a synonym of uninterested. Check any contemporary thesaurus: disinterested is listed as a synonym of uninterested, and vice versa. That’s simply what has happened in English convention now. And convention defines all language. Not what you wish were true.
Thank you Dr Carrier
I’v checkt two dictionaries:
Collins:
1. Someone who is disinterested is not involved in a particular situation or not likely to benefit from it and is therefore able to act in a fair and unselfish way.
If you are disinterested in something, you are not interested in it. Some users of English believe that it is not correct to use disinterested with this meaning.
Cambridge:
having no personal involvement or receiving no personal advantage, and therefore free to act fairly:
a disinterested observer/judgment
a piece of disinterested advice
Note:
Disinterested is sometimes used to mean not interested, but many people consider this use to be incorrect. Compare uninterested.
—
That’s why British English ‘convention’ and register is far better.
PS is the ‘convention’ you speak ov the same ‘convention’ that has determin’d churches’ ‘canons’.
(only they’d call it being guided by the Holy Ghost etc)
You only listed entry “1.” I said the second; that’s entry “2.” Present entry 2 please. From a dictionary of American English.
Do you believe that the second century version of Origen church father would already have your accidental interpolation? There is depence among the mentions? That’s not contradictory if the 18 book would apear in forth century?
Origen is third century. And I demonstrate in my JECS article, summarized here, that no, all the evidence indicates Origen did not know of any manuscript of Josephus that had the words “called Christ” in the James story (which is in book 20); nor of any manuscript that contained any passage about Jesus in book 18 (taht’s the TF). I show the evidence supports the conclusion that both those things were interpolated in Origen’s library when his manuscript was replaced with an updated copy sometime after he wrote and before Eusebius wrote (who was using the same library), and that all current manuscripts are descendants of that manuscript Eusebius used. The most likely culprits are Pamphilus (who ran that library in between Origen and Eusebius’s tenure there, and tutored Eusebius) and Eusebius (Olson, for example, argues for Eusebius; I more strongly suspect Pamphilus).
So where is the contradiction you are referring to?
Well, but then do you believe that the TF shaped the mention in the book 20?
As I’ve explained several times, there was no TF. So it obviously cannot have shaped the mention in book 20. But even if there were a TF when the “called Christ” phrase were added to book 20, it cannot have played any role in influencing it, because whoever added it seems completely unaware of the TF (for the reasons I explain in the article above).
Likewise the evidence strongly supports my theory that that phrase was added by accident, which entails it’s very unlikely the scribe who added it did so because of the TF; rather, they did so because of a common scribal mistake I document in JECS.
Update: Discussing this point with others reminds me I could and should have developed another argument to the same conclusion:
Had Origen known of the James passage we have (as we now have it) he would have written completely different things than he did.
Origen would not have said Josephus connected the fall of Jerusalem to the killing of James (Origen would instead have noticed Josephus linked it to the killing of Ananus), and he also would not have said Josephus called him James the Just, and he would not have said Josephus described how the people dubbed him the Just for being so just. Those are all things in Hegesippus—thus proving my conclusion that Origen confused Hegesippus for Josephus. The probability that that is what happened is for all three reasons far higher than any other hypothesis. So it would be irrational to reject that hypothesis. This much I already argued in JECS. And Mason is simply ignoring everything I argued in JECS.
But a counterfactual point also reinforces this conclusion: not only would Origen not have said any of those things, but he would instead have said entirely different things. Extending my point about Acts, that it would have included this story if ever it existed (and as I explain in my article there and here in my blog, that’s true whether the author of Acts was using Josephus as a source or not, but especially so if he was, and there is abundant evidence he was), Origen would likewise have used the material in this passage to bolster his apologetic against Celsus—the fact that he didn’t is therefore additional evidence he never knew this passage connected to Jesus Christ (because in his copy, it didn’t).
We can see how Origen milked the John the Baptist passage in Josephus for his apologetic against Celsus, and we can see how Origen milked the Hegesippus passage for his apologetic against Celsus (he merely mistakenly cited it as in Josephus). So we know for a fact Origen milks passages in Josephus for all their apologetic value, when he finds any that have any such value. And this James passage would have had so much such value, Origen could not have neglected to milk it, too. For instance, this passage shows Romans and the Jewish elite opposing the persecution of Christians; Origen would have mentioned that, in support of every point he wanted to make against Celsus; and this passage explains Ananus only killed Christians because he was particularly cruel and adhered to an obsolete Jewish sect, another two points Origen could have made much apologetic use of, not only for the general fact of them, but also as evidence Josephus agreed with this opposition to persecuting Christians and did not deem them worthy of such animus.
Origen would also have described this passage differently, e.g. he would sooner name Ananus and his peculiar cruelty (and Josephus’s criticism of it) against Christians, rather than claiming it called James “the Just” or that it said the “people” called James “the Just” or that Josephus agreed killing James caused the fall of Jerusalem.
So not only does what Origen actually say directly support only the “confusion with Hegesippus” theory, but what Origen doesn’t say adds even greater weight to that same conclusion.
Another possibility is proposed by Zvi Baras:
“it seems more likely that the sequential events (hoc post hoc) in Hegesippus—namely, James’ martyrdom and the siege—became for Origen causal events (hoc propter hoc).33 In fact, I believe that we can now point to a specific place, or incident, in Josephus’ own writings—unnoticed so far by scholars in this context—which led Origen to say that Josephus should have corrected his historical interpretation. I refer to Antiquities XI, 297-305, where the remarks of Josephus may have served Origen as guideposts in leading him in the direction he took”
Already addressed. See my discussion of Baras here (under “Closing Example”).
Note that Baras is trying to explain Origen’s mistake. He is not defending the position that Origen could honestly have said Josephus blamed the fall of Jerusalem on James. That, Baras admits, comes from Hegesippus. The very conclusion I reach. As I noted originally when discussing this (per link above):
(Note that Origen does not say Josephus “should have” blamed the event on the death of James; Origen says Josephus “said that these things happened to them in accordance with the wrath of God in consequence of the things which they had dared to do against James the brother of Jesus”; so Baras can only mean Origen screwed up what he meant to say. And once you admit that, there is no other viable explanation left than that Origen mistook what Hegesippus said for what Josephus said.)
Regarding Josephus’s use of “legomenos”, here are two examples where he doesn’t explain anything:
“So both Hyrcanus and Phasaelus went on the embassage; but Pacorus left with Herod two hundred horsemen, and ten men, who were called the freemen; and conducted the others on their journey; and when they were in Galilee, the governors of the cities there met them in their arms.”
“He also gave order that the king should draw his forces out the next day, (11) for that he should find them between Jerusalem and the ascent of Engedi, at a place called TheEminence, and that he should not fight against them, but only stand still, and see how God would fight against them”
Those aren’t examples of double naming. Mason is arguing that Josephus elsewhere adds a second identifier like he does in the James passage (“Jesus, called Christ”). The fact that Josephus uses legomenos to simply report a name is not relevant to his point; because Josephus does not say “brother of the so-called Christ,” or any such thing, which incidentally would not as likely be an interpolation (because it entails he meant something to come after “brother,” identifying who James was the brother of).
The problem is that Josephus says “brother of Jesus” and so Mason needs to argue it was not uncommon for Josephus to add an epithet to an already-given name using the connecting word legomenos. That’s why he gives the examples he does, and not the two you do. Those two examples don’t help his argument. They would if the passage read “brother of the so-called Christ.” But it doesn’t.
Dr Carrier, I really think you should have titled this article: Mason: Classical Gas!
Just FYI I forwarded the link for this blog to Steve Mason via email and he responded as follows:
“Thanks. I don’t have time for it, or polemics in general, but thanks for the consideration”
LOL
Indeed. This article of mine was inspired by his bizarre answers to someone else’s questions about all these things; his responses repeat what I conclude: he simply makes up reasons to ignore any argument against anything he has decided upon and never addresses or responds to anything argued against him. He is thus no longer doing history. He’s just writing personal propaganda.
Hi, Richard. I came across this article and thought I’d ask your thoughts about it.
https://www.academia.edu/4062154/Olson_A_Eusebian_Reading_of_the_Testimonium_Flavianum_2013?email_work_card=view-paper
It seems to me to be supportive of your thinking on the subject. It looks like it’s from 2013 so OHJ was not yet a thing to be cited.
Yes. I discuss that article (and others) in my update Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014.
OP: “[Mason] likewise says things that are weirdly false, like that “the Christ-myth side downplays the diversity of early Christ-following,” which is literally exactly the opposite of the truth—that early sectarian diversity is actually a significant component of our case.
And Mason appears to be oblivious of the work by Raphael Lataster, who identifies three positions held by scholars, being: historicity; agnosticism; and mythicism.
That might be an uncharitable reading. I don’t think Mason intended to imply historicity agnosticism didn’t exist or wasn’t an option; he meant, rather, that doubt can only be generated by adopting a particular stance on early Christian sectarianism (not how much doubt; any doubt, even just enough to only be agnostic, would therefore satisfy his point).
Mason is only wrong about the premise that this is what mythicists do; he isn’t wrong about agnosticism. I’m sure he’d allow that was an available outcome from hearing a mythicist case.
To the extent that there are really two experts who dominate publishing on Josephus — Steve Mason and Daniel Schwartz — I always find Schwartz’s scholarship to be of higher caliber.
What by Schwartz on this subject do you most recommend?
Hey there, Dr. Carrier. My 1st post here.
In his work “Studies on the Hasmonean Period”, author Joshua Efron suggests that the “James Passage” is part of a much bigger Christian forgery on Book XX of Josephu´s “Antiquities”.
Neil Goddfrey of “Vridgar.org” has published an article this year quoting Efron´s claims. Do you think his claims are worth considering?
Link: https://vridar.org/2021/04/30/is-the-entire-james-passage-in-josephus-an-interpolation/#more-99391
Not particularly, and for the reasons I here already note: one does not “fix” a passage one is actually writing. Thus just as with the Baptist section, the interpolated material proves the surrounding material was already there, and thus not written for Christians. Had a Christian written the entire James passage it would look like the Testimonium Flavianum passage: it would match known Christian legends about James, and talk up the role of Christianity in the narrative of events. Instead, when you remove just two words, whose origin is easy to explain, the passage has nothing whatever Christian about it, and matches no Christian legend of anyone.
As just one example, the passage appears explicitly uninterested in what crimes James was executed for, which indicates it comes from Josephus, who did indeed not care, as that was of no relevance to his story (see my discussion in What Did Josephus Mean by That). This could not possibly be the case for a Christian writer.
Meanwhile, contra Efron, he is making a basic mistake regarding which Ananus Josephus is talking about, which is understandable, as Josephus himself explicitly gets confused between them from time to time. See my discussion here. Efron makes other mistakes of like nature, such as claiming Ananus isn’t punished; he is: he is deposed and replaced with the brother of the man he killed. Nowhere does Josephus say James was innocent; thus Ananus did not commit murder. All he did was commit a procedural error: he convened a trial without Roman approval. Nothing here says the verdict of that trial wasn’t legit (one other reason Christians can’t have written it). The only reason Josephus says anyone raised a fuss was not that James was innocent, but that Ananus violated administrative procedure. His punishment is commensurate with the crime. There are other errors like this in Efron’s analysis, which become clear if you review my arguments about this passage in On the Historicity of Jesus.
In short, “Christians wrote the whole thing” makes almost no sense of the actual passage as written. Whereas it makes perfect sense as part of Josephus’s political history of the succession of priests and Roman involvement therein.
WOW, thank you very much for actually taking your time to answer my comment, and so early. I just recently finished reading “On The Historicity of Jesus”, one the best books I ever red. I intent to get “Proving History” soon, as well as a book written by Fernando Bermejo-Rubio – a historicist that you spoke very positively about in the past.
I will get this opportunity in order to just ask one more question: is there any work written before Doherty´s “The Jesus Puzzle” that you consider to be equally or almost as credible of a defense of the mythicist position?
Before Jesus Puzzle, no, not really.
Prior to that there were two kinds of publications arguing the point: crankery (which constututed the most widely read and popular work); and methodologically outdated and insufficient work (which was mostly so obscure hardly anyone has even heard of it).
The latter category includes the works of G.A. Wells starting in the 1980s, which wasn’t crank, but wasn’t up to snuff either: he never developed (much less empirically defended) a coherent alternative theory of the origins of Christianity and he relied variously on several fallacies (such as conflating “Gospel Jesus” with “Historical Jesus”). Hence he never got anything published past peer review, which is perhaps to be expected because he wasn’t an expert but an amateur. His work is largely of no use to Jesus studies.
Wells’ genuine expertise was in modern German literature, which is where he learned of Jesus mythicism, from early 20th century German scholars and their Continental peers. He was more or less trying to update such really old work by Drews or Couchoud and the like, but didn’t have the chops to succeed at that. Those works were legitimate scholarship but are woefully obsolete, predating what are today considered sound methods in historical study, and consequently would never pass peer review today (generally, all history published before 1950 is simply unreliable, across the board; this was not a defect particular to Jesus mythicism, but universal to all historical fields). So they have only limited utility, as nothing more than a source of ideas to then test with current and more reliable methods, or to independently fact-check and more accurately describe, and the like.
That old wave of Jesus mythicism was “answered” by the peer reviewed study of Shirley Jackson Case in 1912 (2nd ed. 1928), which was the last peer reviewed book specifically on the question of the historicity of Jesus until mine in 2014 and Lataster’s in 2019. It was assumed Case had refuted all challenges and so the subject was largely ignored ever since, until Wells. I address Case in Ch. 12 of On the Historicity of Jesus.
Case is more or less just summarized in a few pages by Van Voorst, whose book is not about historicity but just spends a few pages on it, explaining why he won’t discuss that debate further (see author index for where I cover these pages in OHJ). In the same fashion, you get hints of historicity agnosticism, but no systematic defense of mythicism, in other like authors (e.g. Jean Magne argues for the Gospel Jesus being a myth, which is the mainstream consensus now so not even controversial, but punts as to minimal historicity by merely spending a page or two only on how it’s a possibility there was no Jesus, name-dropping Wells et al.; he neither advances, nor defends, any alternative theory of Christian origins, much less tests it against any kind of plausible theories of historicity).
Who is the James in Acts 15:13 supposed to be? Is it meant to be the brother or half brother of Jesus? I thought he only made a cameo in Chpt 1?
Acts is revisionist history, mostly fiction (often directly contradicting eyewitness sources, like Paul). So it wouldn’t really matter all that much what the author of Acts wanted us to believe any particular James to be, as we couldn’t necessarily trust that to be historical. But, notably, the author of Acts clearly has no knowledge of any family of Jesus being involved in church history (from Acts 2 on; I suspect because the idea of that hadn’t been invented yet, or at least not yet in circles known to that author). They only know (per Acts 1) of James the brother of John (the sons of Zebedee; the “Pillars”), and James ben Alphaeus; neither of whom, by that time, had ever been imagined kin of Jesus (as Acts 1 makes clear by listing Jesus’s brothers separately, and without naming any).
I heard Steve Mason say to Derek Lambert (the Mythvision guy on youtube) that he, Mason, thinks Josephus could refer to someone called “Christos” without explaining any further. Mason seemed think Jospehus’s original readers would have just accepted it as a nickname, “the smeared one”, not a name that implies any religion/theology or followers called “Christians”.
I assume you mean the same claim I already here explain, and refute, in my article above, to wit:
Or do you mean Mason made a different claim on MythVision, that this passage wasn’t about the Christian Jesus, but some other random person who just happened to have a similar nickname? That would be a new take. But still quite implausible.
Josephus would not be unaware of the fact that that “nickname” means messiah, a word he assiduously avoids everywhere else in his histories (even when he talks about messiahs, which is often). The same word is in the Septuagint text of the Daniel prophecy about the messiah (and in many other messianic passages in the OT), which Josephus comments on, so he would not act like this was just some obscure nickname no one cared about, even if he didn’t know anything about Christians or their claims. But half the time Mason insists he does know, so Mason can’t claim Josephus here acted like this nickname didn’t connect to any prior point he made about that very same man—unless he finally admits the TF is entirely forged and Josephus never mentioned Christ. So is this more incoherence from Mason? I confess I don’t follow his logic if that’s the case.
But regardless, whether the claim I discuss in this article or this new bizarre claim (?), the same holds against it: Josephus would not just throw in an unexplained nickname here, as I already demonstrated in this very article you are commenting on. Such a behavior would multiply violate his discourse style, even with nicknames (per above), but in several other ways as well: see Reading Josephus on James: On Valliant Flunking Literary Theory.
On the Historicity of Jesus — link does not work
Fixed. Thanks.
Richard,
I’ve been trying to find Mason’s bona fides, and am not having any luck. Neither his Wikipedia page nor his biography page on his former university’s website list his degrees. It’s all very hush-hush. I’m looking into the education of scholars who have come out against mythicism. He often presents himself as an historian, and I just wanted to check into whether he is a legitimate historian with a Ph.D. from an actual Department of History, or if he’s pulling a Bart Ehrmin and just styling himself as a historian, while in reality, having degrees in theology, or in the case of Mason theology, religion, New Testament, or some other related field. You referred to him as an historian in this article, I’m just wondering if you were able to confirm that for sure? Thanks!!
Anna
That is always worth checking, I agree. Though I think Th.D.’s can do history well of they get trained in it well or train themselves in it well, that is not always an inherent feature of such graduate programs, however, so presuming it is shaky ground; and of course, for a theologian to claim an actual trained historian is the one between them who can’t do history is always the kettle calling the tile black.
In Mason’s case, U. Groningen has an abbreviated cv (the non-abbreviated cv is the thing to look for; serious scholars always have one, and sometimes you can find it online, like mine), though all the abbreviated one says is he completed his PhD with a specialization in ancient Judaism at “Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College,” not what his degree field there was. But he’s a widely respected professor who has enjoyed several prestigious university appointments and has a large, quality, peer-reviewed publication record, and his dissertation put history-skills forward. There isn’t any reason to doubt his bona fides.
He also is among the historians now who consider mythicism at least plausible enough to take seriously.