Possible does not mean probable. All you are declaring here are disjointed speculations without adequate evidence. There is no point in responding to comments like this. If you aren’t even going to address the published scholarship on Luke’s use of Josephus, I’m not going to address your speculations. You have to do the work if you want to be taken seriously. I’m not your tutor.

Good Morning,

We have some people who are under the persuasian Jesus is historical and some who are not. A historian, Josephus, includes the Testimonium Flavianum. Josephus who lived in Galilee would have had access to adults who lived in Galilee from 30-33 Common Era when the biblical Jesus is ministering. Josephus’ account is important. Second, Josephus would also be aware of the oral tradition about the biblical Jesus after his death.

Dr. Richard Carrier:

The TF is rife with vocabulary and parallels from the Gospel of Luke…and it has long been noted that the evidence indicates Luke used Josephus as a source, and not the other way around.

StephenCampbell
And not the other way around? What’s more important than Josephus using Luke as a source but Josephus using as sources the actual events as reported by witnesses in Galilee and oral traditions about Jesus’ life after crucifixion. Now, if Luke didn’t write these accounts down until more than 30 years later, Luke is not as important a historical source as the historian who spent time in both Galilee and Jerusalem. Did Luke even exist? Bart Ehrman raises questions about the original autographs of the canonical gospels. We do know, Josephus existed and his testimony about the existence of Jesus is a serious matter. Josephus says he was condemned to the cross but appeared to those who loved him.

It is important to know whether or not Dr. Carrier considers the paranormal a fact. The specific refernces here are: 1) survival of consciousness after death and 2) the dead making their presence known to incarnate humans.

Jesus is known to have been a great healer. The Talmud claims he went to Egypt to learn magical healing.

Josephus does not say he appeared to his enemies. Jesus did not present himself to the priests.

Is this line of the TF plausible: yes it is. The dead are alive and the communicate with us. Yes, there is a book by that name. The dead have been recorded, photographed, reincarnated, and they make birds move so mourners can see hope in a bird. They make us sense them.

After reading the above blog and then the blog post by Ken Olson, as a guest blogger at The Jesus Blog, I have what I believe is a reasonable doubt.

Peter Schafer in his book, Jesus in the Talmud, says given the references to Jesus in his book. These references do not establish Jesus as a historical person. I have reasonable doubts about that, but going further, when a Schafer leaves out two important references to Jesus, readers’ reasonable doubts increase, and the TF seems more legit than without considering one of the two references.

Schafer misleads people into thinking he’s covered all the references to Jesus in the Talmud, but he fails to mention Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 105a. This should have been added to his coverage of Jesus and Ancient Egyptian magic/sorcery. Ancient Egyptian creation myths are related to Sanhedrin 105a. Here, Balaam is Jesus because after reading Numbers chapters 22-24, it would not be the Balaam of the Torah who was practicing Egyptian sorcery but Jesus.

An Egyptological perspective factors into an accurate concept of Jesus. One book that covers this subject is Insights on the Exodus, King David, and Jesus: The Greatest Bible Study in Historical Accuracy: The Hebrew and Christian Bibles, The Koran, and The Book of Mormon. This book of personal essays is authored by me. My pen is Steefen.

Second, I don’t recall Schafer mentioning this either:

Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish said: Woe unto “him who makes himself alive by the name of god.”
Rabbi Johanan (ben Zakkai) replied: Woe to the nation that attempting to hinder the Holy One when he accomplishes the redemption of his children: who would throw his garment between a lion and a lioness when these are copulating?
– Talmud IV Sanhedrin 106a

Rabbi Lakish is referring to resurrection when it is written “makes himself alive.”
Lion is a reference to Judah and the God of Judah. The God of Judah tried to redeem his people via Jesus, the Redeemer. He was rejected. Who is the lioness. We look to the story of the Redeemer in the New Testament; and, that person is Jesus’ mother, who was impregnated by God.

Rabbi Zakkai was a contemporary of Josephus. Vespasian gave Rabbi Zakkai Yavne University; and, Rabbi Zakkai proclaims the Christian story. Josephus, also a rabbi, is given plains outside of Jerusalem as well; and Josephus gives us the TF.

A university founder and president testifies support for the Christian story and so does a historian. We have a set of witnesses. I reasonably doubt one piece of the set can be discredited as unauthentic.

Thank you.
Stephen Campbell
Pen Name: Steefen

Ah. Thanks. The abstract there says he argues the interpolation occurred early second century. That can have no basis in fact. There is no evidence to support such a notion, and the evidence we do have refutes it.* Yet it appears his entire argument proceeds from that one unsupportable premise.

* See my article on Josephus, pp. 492-94, which also refutes other elements of Bardet’s case, which resembles that of Alice Whealey; moreover, the articles of Goldberg and Olson, which I cite and discuss above, further destroy his case; all three authors published after him, so it appears his book is now obsolete.

I found out, that the Bardet’s work is actually a book, 286 pages long (Le Testimonium Flavianum
Examen historique. Considérations historiographiques). So it appears that what I found is not the work I thought it was, but somekind of summary of it.

This site ( http://legrandabsent.coolbb.net/t56-le-testimonium-flavianum-reloaded ) seems to give some kind of summary about the arguments Bardet used. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I guess it gives clues about the arguments.

No. Do you have a full citation?

Whoops – I meant to reply to this comment by Phillp. Sorry.

[I think this means this comment, which is supposed to be here.–RC]

Exactly. What I miss is a comparative study of Paul’s use of “brother”. Is it clear from context or word-use that he intends a different meaning when talking about James than what he does when addressing fellow Christians as brothers. It’s very annoying that all discussion seems to focus on that passage, without drawing upon the rest of the letter(s).

And that’s the end of it.

You never see reason.

That’s my point.

Talking with you is a waste of time.

We’re done.

Oh, yes. Certainly it could have been intentional. In my article for JECS I describe scenarios whereby it came to be deliberately inserted. Although I assume in them it was innocently, one can imagine a less innocent motive as well. That’s not incompatible with the evidence. It’s just not necessary to explain it (and I would tend to think a deliberate emendation would be more extensive and not consist of simply inserting two words or replacing two words).

In response to your general thoughts, though, I have a lot of experience with scribal error in manuscripts (it was a formal part of my graduate studies at Columbia), and I can vouch for the fact that the things scribes did were often not all that smart or intelligent, and sometimes real head scratchers. So arguments about what we think a scribe would surely do are often questionable unless you can back it up (at least in principle) with evidence of scribes having done exactly that, and often enough that you can consider it what they would typically do (or at whatever frequency your argument requires).

To illustrate the point, the Aetna, a Latin poem written in the 1st century, is about 20% complete gibberish. Because scribes just kept copying it without reading it or paying attention to the errors they were replicating, and this kept happening over and over again, until the random errors that accumulated rendered sentences and whole paragraphs completely unintelligible. Yet scribes kept copying those gibberish sections as meticulously as ever. It’s crazy. But that’s what they did.

And that’s not even a fraction of the weird stuff I’ve seen.