"Among the things we have confirmed now is that all surviving manuscripts of the
Antiquities derive from the last manuscript of it produced at the Christian library of Caesarea between 220 and 320 A.D.
, the same manuscript used and quoted by Eusebius, the first Christian in history to notice either passage being in the
Antiquities of Josephus. That means we have no access to any earlier version of the text (we do not know what the text looked like prior to 230 A.D.), and we have access to no version of the text untouched by Eusebius (no other manuscript in any other library ever on earth produced any copies that survive to today).
That must be taken into account.
The latest research collectively establishes that both references to Jesus were probably added to the manuscripts of Josephus at the Library of Caesarea after their first custodian, Origen—who had no knowledge of either passage—but by the time of their last custodian, Eusebius—who is the first to find them there. The long passage (the Testimonium Flavianum) was almost certainly added deliberately; the later passage about James probably had the phrase “the one called Christ” (just three words in Greek) added to it accidentally, and was not originally about the Christian James, but someone else. On why we should conclude thus I’ll explain shortly."
So it's become very questionable as evidence. How hard is that?
Too much effort....? What? Deny the ob....huh??!
I get it, you have a belief and if something can help support this belief then you would prefer it left alone. Unfortunately that isn't how science or history is done. Unless you want things that are not true.
For centuries scholars who were Christians decided to assume it was true. Now people are allowed to question documents. It's their JOB?! It's isn't "too much effort"?
Some historians want to prove historicity so they also have an invested interest to show this document is correct. Recent studies do not support that. The only "too much effort" here is that you won't accept that scholarship has raised legitimite doubts about this passage. That's what they are paid to do???
Some of the issues with the James passage. It's a complex study with many points, as historians like to do.
- If Josephus had written this passage as about the persecution of Christians, he would have explained things, as is his style consistently in all his historical writing; only a Christian would just assume all those obscure things were already known to the reader (like what a “Christ” was; that James was a Christian; that Jews sought to kill Christians; and why, we must then suppose, the Jewish elite and Roman authorities opposed the killing of James if he was a Christian).
- The words tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ,” is for these and many other reasons most likely a marginal note (by Origen or Pamphilus, or another scribe or scholar in the same Library of Caesarea), expressing belief rather than fact (possibly trying to find the passage Origen claimed he’d seen here but mistakenly saw instead in Hegesippus).
- That marginal note was then accidentally interpolated into the manuscript produced or used by Eusebius (which would have been a copy of the one used by Origen), a very common form of scribal error.
- Possibly by replacing ton tou damnaiou, “the son of Damneus,” in the same place. That same line is repeated at the end of the story. Repetition of that identical phrase a few lines after may have led a scribe to suspect the marginal note was correcting a dittograph (an accidental duplication caused by a previous scribe skipping some lines by mistake, starting at the “wrong” Jesus in the story). But more likely, that duplication is exactly what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus.
