Sunday, August 19th, 2012

lethargic_man: "Happy the person that finds wisdom, and the person that gets understanding."—Prov. 3:13. Icon by Tamara Rigg (limmud)

Moving temporarily out of chronological sequence, I mentioned earlier that there are passages pertaining to Jesus in Josephus that bear evidence of later, Christian tampering. There's also longer passages in the Slavonic version of War, which are now thought to be ninth-century interpolations. However, they're interesting to read anyway, given that they're the product of a Christian arguing pro-Christianity but supposedly from the pen of a Jew:

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And so on in that vein. Later:
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Half of this reads convincingly as an intelligent and sceptical but not prejudiced observer; the other half is blatant Christian apologetic. Why on earth would a Jew even consider the possibility of G-d taking human form, especially given that the Torah takes pains (Deut. 4:12) to say that G-d did not have form (albeit that it also uses some anthropomorphic imagery)? And why on earth would the Romans and Jews both have posted so many guards around his tomb? It's to counter the anti-Christian argument that the body was spirited away by his friends... though Williamson, ever the believer, and who considers these passages to be genuine, comments here (adducing it as evidence of Josephan authorship), "The exaggerated numbers are in the best Josephan style".

I was surprised to see in VII.5 an early version of the mystical river Sambatyon, beyond which the ten lost tribes were exiled, and which is impassable on account of the ferocity of its waters and the boulders they carry with them, except on Shabbos, when it is calm but the Israelites may not travel. In Josephus's version, the river's behaviour is the other way around:

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Martin Goodman claims in his book Rome and Jerusalem that Roman and later Christian antisemitism had its origins in the Destruction of the Temple, and Vespasian and Titus's need to use that victory to prop up their imperial claims. Josephus, however, argues otherwise. When Titus passed through Antioch after the Destruction, the citizens clamoured for the expulsion of the Jews, however Titus would have none of it (VII.5):
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[Josephus] Josephus notes         Jewish learning notes index


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