Posted: Jul 23, 2013 1:30 pm
neilgodfrey wrote:That Jesus, as you intimate here, is really the same Jesus who is the son of Damneus -- one only has to continue reading that paragraph in Josephus to see how this makes so much sense.
Actually it doesn't make too much sense. The reference to Jesus son of Damneus is structured as a first reference to the figure, ie you introduce the figure by giving a patronym or some other familial reference. Jesus son of Damneus is first mentioned in 20.203, while the Jesus brother of James is in 20.200. If this latter Jesus were Jesus son of Damneus, you'd expect the reference to "son of Damneus" in 20.200 to make it the first reference, but it is not there, suggesting that this first Jesus is not the son of Damneus. There is no easy way out of this. One has to suppose a more complex editorial hand at work than implied by a simple inclusion.
However, the expected grammar in the Greek of the brother of Jesus called christ James by name is not there. Greek nominal descriptors are inclusive of the form
- "the of Jesus called christ brother"
τον Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου αδελφον
rather than sequential
- "the brother of Jesus called christ"
τον αδελφον Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου
of the text. One would usually expect the person talked about to precede the descriptor, ie James the brother of Jesus called christ, unless the person the relative in the descriptor is already known to the reader, either recently mentioned or famous. This is not a guarantee by any means that the text was doctored, but it is suggestive of a textual problem. Maybe Josephus had dyspepsia while writing. Who knows?
But an interesting place to start analysing the issue is the use by Origen of James the brother of Jesus. His source is clearly not Josephus, though he attributes his passage (three times) to Josephus, but Josephus makes no connection between the death of James and the fall of Jerusalem as Origen does. However, Hegesippus (a name confused with Josephus) deals with the death of James and he does indirectly relate James's death to the fall of Jerusalem in such a way that it could be misconstrued. If Origen confused Hegesippus for Josephus, then we have a trajectory:
- Hegesippus, rewritten by
--> Origen CC 1.47, influences a marginal note leading to its insertion in
--> Josephus AJ 20.200, and all three are recorded by
--> Eusebius EH 2:22 (who mistakes Origen's material as a separate source by Josephus)
This suggests that none of the phrase "the brother of Jesus called christ" was originally in the text, which may originally have been something like "a certain man, James by name".