Not off hand. There are rarely actual secular commentaries on any book of the Bible. Best you can usually manage is a liberal theologian willing to admit uncomfortable facts and with fewer dogmas to defend. I haven’t researched Revelation commentaries enough to recommend any.

I was wondering – do you know of any good secular commentaries on the Book of Revelation? I am having trouble finding them, as most of the ones that I’ve found have a Chrisitan/ theological bent.

Thanks

Such negligence on the part of so meticulous a scholar is unacceptable

Note that in my article in JECS (which I will soon be reproducing in an anthology) I refute this claim by demonstrating Origen makes exactly these kinds of mistakes elsewhere.

But although Josephus’ importance for Origen lay mainly in the fact that he was a contemporaneuous historian (”a man who lived not long after John and Jesus”), Origen did not quote him directly; only in indirect speech (oratio obliqua) did Origen summarize Josephus’information. How, then, could Origen have arrived at such a conclusion, attribuited by him to Josephus, and whence could he have found support? The lack of such a version in the extant text of Josephus has induced scholars to explain it in different ways. One is the assumption that Origen’s version of James’ martyrdom indeed appeared in Josephus’ original text, but has not been preserved. Such an assumption overlooks the question of why the Testimonium passage should have remained in Josephus’ text, while the story of James’ martyrdom – neither disdainful nor defamatory toward Christ — should have been excised from Josephus’ writings.

(from Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity edited by Louis Harry Feldman, Gōhei Hata; the key words I used are ”hoc post hoc feldman”)

Until this all OK with what already Earl Doherty tell us: the ”lost reference” was only a legend, never present in original Josephus.

But after the article reads:

The other generally accepted explanation is that Origen confused the accounts of James and John the Baptist in Josephus and Hegesippus and followed the latter, who associated James’ martyrdom with the siege of Jerusalem. We reproduce here only the last few relevant lines of Hegesippus, as quoted at lenght by Eusebius: ”Such was his martyrdom. He was buried on the spot, by the Sanctuary, and his headstone is still there by the Sanctuary. He has proven a true witness to Jews and Gentile alike that Jesus is Christ. Immediately after this Vespasian began to besiege them.” Could Origen have confused the sources? Such negligence on the part of so meticolous a scholar is unaccettable. I have already pointed out elsewhere that is 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).

Pardon??? ”Sequential events” in Hegesippus and not ”causal (i.e. theological) events”? It’s impossible. In that ”Immediately (euthys) after this Vespasian began to besiege them” that euthys is implicitly establishing a causal link between ”James’martyrdom and the siege”.

But why this Zvi Baras needs to remove the causal (theological) link (hoc propter hoc) from Hegesippus? Because in this way only Origen can be the author of that theological reading of actual Antiquities 20:200 :

In fact, I believe that we can now point to a specific place … in Josephus, 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.

This explains because Hegesippus (or some other christian before Origen) has not the right — for Zvi Baras — to see the *causal* link death of James—>siege: he had done this, Origen would be not more the *single* creator of the ”causal” link about James/siege (and then of the construct ”who is called Christ”, that otherwise will have a distinct origin from the Josephus read by Origen, more plausibly in Hegesippus).

Thank you for your remarks above,
Giuseppe

Precisely.

But he’s also confused. He has mistaken different people with the same name.

See my remark here (and keep reading that thread from there down to see more nailing the point, thanks to helpful commentators).

an apologist pointed me to this post of an aggressive anti-mythicist

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/the-jesus-myth-theory-reponse-to-david.html

It is totally incorrect to strike the Fitzgerald’s book (which is only useful to debunking the godman, not the ordinary man) to actually strike you (that want debunking the same ordinary man).

But what do you think of what he has to say about the passage in Josephus on James ”called Christ”?

This means, according to Carrier’s reading, the very man whose brother Hanan had just executed and who had replaced him in the priesthood has, a couple of sentences later, become friends with his brother’s killer because he was given some gifts. This clearly makes zero sense.

but this giving gifts to the victim’s brother by his murderer is typical of the contexts in which the main objective is to try to save a fragile political balance.

Was not Pompey fought by Caesar, despite having married his daughter?

thanks,
Giuseppe

For a beginner, yes. It doesn’t prove Jesus didn’t exist (despite some of the ad copy), but it does show up common “myths” held by the public (and many Christians) about the matter that mainstream scholars agree are mistaken. Think of it as a debunking of the Christian Jesus (the godman), rather than of the reconstructed secular Jesus (the ordinary man).

What do you think of David Fitzgerald’s book Nailed? Is it worth of reading?

if those documents could be shown to be early, it would add probability to the claim that ‘Christianity’ existed before the supposed crucifixion.

The trouble is with the “if.”

In fact, if those documents were shown to be early, that would not just add probability to the claim that Christianity existed before the supposed crucifixion; it would prove the claim that Christianity existed before the supposed crucifixion. Thus, I assume you mean that the higher the probability that those docs are early, the higher the probability that Christianity preexisted Pilate. Which is true as a general rule, but that’s of no use knowing. As I explain in Proving History (p. 138) for the bootstrapping fallacy: until that increase in probability becomes significant, it’s irrelevant.

I think his work is no worse than many a Ph.D. in NT Studies.

You sure know how to damn with faint praise.

Of course I understand that possible does not mean probable. That’s why I’m curious about what could be down to test the hypothesis. It may not need his early dating, but my impression was that if those documents could be shown to be early, it would add probability to the claim that ‘Christianity’ existed before the supposed crucifixion.