Josephus and the Testimonium Flaviana

Continued...

Historians have tried to rescue this passage by 'rewriting' it, removing everything that Josephus would surely never say, and then claiming he surely said what's left and Christians just changed it up. But this is such an extraordinarily improbable thesis it must be rejected outright. For example, Josephus must have mentioned 'Christ' because he presumes it when he explains the name 'Christian' in the last line, but there is no plausible way Josephus would say this (or even 'he was believed to be the Christ', as some later quotations have it) without explaining to his intended Gentile readers what a 'Christ' was and what it meant for Jesus to have been one, and thus why Josephus is mentioning it or how Jesus even came to acquire the moniker. [82] So we can strike those two sentences. Josephus cannot have written them. He also would not have written such fawningly unintelligible things as 'if we really must call him a man' or 'doer of incredible deeds' or 'teacher... of the truth' without explaining to his Gentile readers what he meant - or giving examples, as Josephus normally would. So those sentences must be struck. He cannot have written them. Nor would Josephus say things like 'he won over' many Jews and Greeks, without explaining exactly to what he won them over - and thus what defined someone as a Christian, what doctrines they held. Josephus does this for every other sect he discusses (such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and, under the rubric of 'the fourth philosophy', the Zealots). So he certainly would do so here, the more so as his remarks would be unfathomable to most of his readers without that explanation. So we can strike that sentence. He cannot have written it.

Nor would Josephus give his readers a mysteriously truncated summary of what can only mean the Gospel story of 'leading men' accusing Jesus and getting him executed - without explaining what any of that meant. What leading men? What accusations? Why? Why did Pilate accede to them? Was Jesus guilty? Why did Pilate conclude he was? Why didn't the Jews execute Jesus themselves? And if he was such a wonderful, truth-telling, miracle-working wise man whom so many loved, how did he end up being convicted of a capital crime? The failure to explain any of these things makes the paragraph intolerably maddening to any reader, and would have been likewise to Josephus. He could not possibly have written this. So that sentence must go.

Likewise why does Josephus mention Jesus 'appearing' on 'the third day', which is a Christian credal statement that Josephus would not possibly employ without explaining why, or what he thought this meant - did Jesus escape his execution? Was he therefore a fugitive on the run? What happened to him after this? Or did he appear in a dream or as a phantom? Or was he resurrected from the dead, a concept Josephus explains several times elsewhere in his work, so surely he would make a point of it here, if this is what he meant (or thought his source meant). So he cannot have written this, either. And surely it is absurd to think Josephus agreed (much less would so casually say) that Jesus fulfilled biblical prophecy - at all, much less in these specific details (as well as 'countless others'), as this passage says. So he certainly did not write that sentence either. That leaves us with only one sentence left over: 'and there was about this time Jesus, a wise man'. After which no story follows. We can conclude that Josephus didn't write this, either. He discusses several men named Jesus throughout his works, so he would certainly either identify this one (as we'll see, e.g. he identifies another Jesus as 'the son of Damneus'), or explain why he is suddenly interrupting his narrative to talk about this one. Otherwise this transition is simply too abrupt and bizarre for Josephus.

All these improbable sentences stack up to an enormous improbability that Josephus wrote any of this. And that's just from examining its content alone. [83] The paragraph is simply unsalvageable. Nor should anyone desire to salvage it. It is obviously much too brief and much too obviously a simplistic Christian production based upon the Gospel of Luke. Moreover, no other author had ever heard of this passage until Eusebius in the fourth century - not even Origen, who otherwise cites and quotes Josephus several times, so surely Origen would have mentioned this passage had it existed in his copy of the Antiquities. The probability of his silence is very low otherwise, and that probability reduces even further when we consider the silence of every other Christian and pagan author, even if (and even collectively) their silence is not as improbable as Origen's. [84]

Considering just Origen alone, there are several passages where it's almost certain he would have remarked upon this paragraph, even quoted it, had he known of it. For example, in his treatise Against Celsus Origen is tasked with proving there was any near-contemporary attestation to the affairs of Jesus. [85] Yet all he can present in said proof are passages in Josephus attesting John the Baptist and (supposedly) James (see below). [86] Likewise, at many other turns in his contest with Celsus, Origen would surely have had irresistible use of the fact that this same Josephus attested to the ministry of Jesus, declared him wise (and thus did not think him a charlatan, as Celsus persistently argues), corroborated his resurrection on the third day (a fact Celsus insists only Christians affirm), and confirmed that he fulfilled prophecy (a major point Origen struggles to establish, and for which the agreement of a Jew would have been priceless).

All attempts to explain away Origen's silence require adopting one or more ad hoc hypotheses for which there is no evidence, such as that Josephus had written something wildly different, which the TF then replaced; or are illogical - for instance, even if an original TF had treated Christians negatively, that would even more have demanded a response, not less so, as the very last thing that Origen could allow is Celsus (or any other critic) citing Josephus, the very source whose authority Origen praises, against him, without a preemptive apologetic. So the silence of Origen is simply very improbable unless there was no TF at all. The silence of all the rest of Christian and anti-Christian literature only adds to the improbability. And the obvious improbability of the content of every single sentence (as just surveyed) adds even more. So we are already looking at an extremely low probability that this passage, or anything even remotely like it, existed in the original Antiquities.

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[82] That the Antiquities was written specifically for a Gentile audience: Josephus, Ant. 1.pr.5-10.

[83] On this general point see Paget, 'Some Observations', pp. 581-603 and 606-19.

[84] That no writer before Eusebius references it, Origen most conspicuously: Paget, 'Some Observations', pp. 555-65; and Whealey, Josephus on Jesus, pp. 6-18.

[85] This is the very task he sets forth in Origen, Against Celsus 1.42, in response to the several challenges made by Celsus as noted in Against Celsus 1.37-41.

[86] Origen, Against Celsus 1.47.

Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. 333-336.

To be continued...

§« The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. »§

Continued...

And yet there are two more reasons that are even more decisive, sinking this probability well towards impossibility: (1) since the very next paragraph begins 'about this same time another terrible thing threw the Jews into disorder' (Ant. 18.65), Josephus clearly had just ended with the sedition resulting in a public massacre (described in Ant. 18.60-62), leaving no logical place for the unrelated digression on Jesus and the Christians (in Ant. 18.63-64) - the original text obviously went directly from the massacre to the following scandal, with no digression in between; and (2) the fact that his very next story, also about a religious controversy (involving Judaism and Isis cult), is told at great and elaborate length (in Ant. 18.65-80, a narrative eight times longer than the TF, and yet on a much more trivial affair). The latter demonstrates that Josephus would have written a great deal more about the Jesus affair if he had written anything about it at all, whereas a forger would have been limited by what may have then been the remaining space available on a standard scroll for volume 18 (or by the space available in the margin, if that is where the passage began its life), hence explaining its bizarre brevity, in comparison with the preceding and following narratives, and in light of its astonishing content, which normally, as I've noted, would require several explanations and digressions which are curiously absent. I believe these two facts alone combine to argue conclusively that there cannot have been here any reference to Jesus in the original Antiquities, even one differently worded than we now have. When combined with the preceding considerations, the overall probability of any other conclusion approaches zero.

It is sometimes claimed that we have an Arabic version of this passage that comes from an earlier manuscript of Josephus than is quoted by Eusebius, and its content is closer to what a Jewish author might write, and therefore this 'confirms' Josephus wrote something close to the TF after all. However, it has since been proved that this Arabic quotation is of a Syriac quotation of a manuscript of Eusebius, and thus represents a text that does not precede Eusebius but derives from him. [87] Its content was simply altered in transmission to sound more plausibly Jewish. But it most definitely does not come from Josephus. [88] There is therefore no basis whatever for believing any mention of Jesus Christ occurred at this point in the Antiquities.

That leaves one other passage in Josephus, where it is said, 'The brother of Jesus (who was called Christ), the name for whom was James, and some others' were tried and stoned by the high priest Ananus for unspecified crimes and in defiance of proper criminal procedure. [89] Obviously, if Jesus Christ had a brother, then Jesus Christ existed. So Josephus is here said to confirm the historicity of Jesus, by knowing details about his family. However, I have elsewhere demonstrated that the phrase 'who was called Christ' is an accidental interpolation and was never written by Josephus. [90] It entered the manuscripts of Josephus sometime in the late third century.

We know this because Origen never quotes this passage, even where scholars claim he does. In fact Origen shows no knowledge of this passage as we have it, or the story it relates, or where it was located in the works of Josephus; whereas Eusebius is the first to actually quote the passage we have in the present text of Josephus. He is thus the first to have known of it. Where Origen is now claimed to be citing this passage, he can be shown to have confused a story written by the Christian hagiographer Hegesippus (whom we just examined in §8) as being in Josephus. At that time, the original text of Josephus probably read either 'the brother of Jesus, the name for whom was James, and some others' or 'the brother of Jesus, the son of Damneus, the name for whom was James, and some others', either way only later accidentally incorporating a Christian marginal or interlinear note (by insertion or replacement, to correct what a later copyist mistook as an error), thereby eclipsing the original meaning of the passage, which was that Ananus was punished for the offense of extralegally executing the brother of 'Jesus ben Damneus' by being removed from office and replaced by that same Jesus ben Damneus (as the narrative goes on to relate).

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[87] See Paget, 'Some Observations', pp. 554-624 (and pp. 568-71 for further reasons to reject the conclusion): Olson, 'Eusebius and the Testimonium Flavianum', pp. 319-22: and most importantly, Alice Whealey, 'The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic', New Testament Studies 54 (2008), pp. 573-90.

[88] The scholar who demonstrated this (Alice Whealey) has tried to argue that it nevertheless represents an original version of Eusebius's quote of the TF and thus, in turn, represents the actual wording of Josephus - e.g. reading 'he was believed to be the Christ' rather than 'he was the Christ', thus sounding more like something a devout Jew might say (even though Josephus would then be compelled to explain what a 'Christ' was, yet doesn't). However, Whealey's theory requires the extraordinarily improbable assumption that all the subsequent manuscripts of the Antiquities were emended to agree with the corruption (to 'he was the Christ', because all extant manuscripts now so read), and likewise all manuscripts of Eusebius, in all the places where he repeats this quote (because he repeats it several times, not just once). That all extant manuscripts of the Antiquities would so perfectly agree with a later corruption that somehow simultaneously occurred in all the works and manuscripts of Eusebius (which corruption by Whealey's argument must have occurred after the fourth century) is simply too improbable to be plausible. More likely some early copy of Eusebius's History alone was 'improved' by a scribe thinking to restore a more plausible quotation from a Jew (thus producing, e.g., 'he was believed to be the Christ'), and it is quotations of this that we see in Whealey's cited examples. Because it is inherently less likely that all manuscript traditions of all the works of Eusebius and all the manuscript traditions of Josephus were conspiratorially emended the same way than that only one manuscript tradition of a single work of Eusebius was emended the other way and thus (as one would then expect) only occasionally evidenced in quotation (which, as Whealey shows, is what we observe). Her argument for authenticity is therefore to be rejected. Add to that the fact that even the altered TF that Whealey defends is wholly implausible from Josephus (as I show from my survey of its content here), the total silence of all other authors (especially Origen) before Eusebius, and the two facts of its position in the text (that it interrupts the text as we have it, and is far too short to be a plausible insertion from Josephus), and there is simply no credible case to be made for the defense of the TF whatever. It simply wasn't there, and we need to give up trying to rescue it.

[89] Josephus, Ant. 20.200.

[90] In Carrier, 'Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation'.

Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. 336-338.

To be continued...

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Continued...

There are six arguments for this conclusion, which together establish such an extremely low probability that any Christ was originally mentioned here that we can dismiss the evidence as of no value to determining the historicity of Jesus. [91]

First, 'who was called Christ' is exactly the kind of thing a scholar or scribe would add as an interlinear note here - to remind him and future readers that (or so the annotator believed) the Jesus here mentioned is Jesus Christ, as we would do today with an informative footnote or marginal note. Indeed these kinds of marginal 'passage identifiers' are common in extant manuscripts. For example, one manuscript of Tacitus has similar comments in the margins identifying the passage mentioning Christ there, for the benefit of Christian readers skimming the text for passages of interest. And in this case, the idiom and vocabulary of 'who was called Christ' is a well-established Christian idiom (derived from the Gospels), commonly used by Origen, yet wholly alien to Josephus (who never otherwise uses the word 'Christ'). [92] In fact the complete phrase 'Jesus, who was called Christ' is (apart from a necessary change of case) identical to that of Mt. 1.16 (which happens to be a passage about Jesus' family), which is thus a phrase Josephus would not be as likely to use as a Christian annotator would. Through such a phrase would not be impossible for Josephus to construct on his own, such a coincidence is less probable than if it originated from a Christian hand.

Second, the words and structure chosen here are indeed the ones that would commonly be used in an interlinear note, essentially just a participating clause - remarkable brevity for something that would sooner otherwise spark a digression or cross-reference, had Josephus actually written those words. Obviously there would almost certainly be a reference to the TF, if it existed (perhaps even identifying the book in which it appeared, so readers would know which scroll to pick up to find out or remind themselves who or what this 'Christ' is and why he's being mentioned, or at the very least mentioning that he had previously discussed this person), especially since the reference is so obscure. The more so as the extant TF does not mention Jesus having a brother, nor explains why his brother would be a target of prosecution, much less defense by other leading Jews; indeed it mentions no persecution of Christians at all but instead emphasizes their unimpeded thriving 'to this day'. Thus, there would be much to explain here even if the TF had existed. For example, in this very same narrative about James, Josephus refers back to his previous discussion of the Sadducees when he mentions them, and explains why mentioning them is relevant to his present story. [93] Yet surely 'Christ' would rate at least the same treatment, being the more obscure (as Sadducees were already mentioned several times previously, even in the very same book: e.g. Ant. 18.16), and an explanation or cross-reference to the TF would be even more natural (e.g. 'the one called Christ whom I mentioned before') - after all, for the Sadducees he gave us both a reference and an explanation of relevance; likewise when he mentions Judas the Galilean in Ant. 20.102, we get an 'as I mentioned before' and an explanation besides.

Or if there was no TF (and as we just saw, there surely wasn't), certainly we'd find here an explanation of why this Jesus was called 'Christ', what that word even meant (at the very least explaining its connection to Christians and James's being one, if that is even what is meant - since James is not said to be a Christian here, or in the TF, thus the text as we have it here requires an assumption only a Christian would make, further arguing against this being from the hand of Josephus), and why Josephus thought it important to mention either, since the passage as written leaves no stated reason for either Jesus or his moniker Christ even to be mentioned at all - and any inferences to such a reason would only occur to a Christian, not to Josephus or his intended readers, who would not know anything about the obscurities of Jewish laws or religion, which is why he always explains such things when they come up elsewhere. [94] In short, such omissions here are far more probable if 'called Christ' is an accidental interpolation, than if they are the words of Josephus.

Third, the story as we have it makes no sense as being the execution of Christians, not only because no such basis for the executions is mentioned, but also because many influential Jews are outraged by the execution of this James and his men and seek the punishment of Ananus (and the Jewish and Roman authorities fully concur and duly punish him), which makes little sense if he was executing members of the hated (if not actually illegal) sect of Christians. Indeed, writing for a Roman audience in the era of Domitian, Josephus would be describing an inexplicable course of events, where the execution of Christians was considered a legal matter of course, not an act warranting outrage and dismissal from office. [95] In fact we get no sense from the way the story is told that there was any popular animosity towards this James and his affiliates. To the contrary, all the animosity in the story is against their killers. Regardless of what Josephus himself may have thought about Christians, it's more likely he would feel a need to explain this strange course of events to his Roman audience than simply gloss over it - whereas if this wasn't a passage about Christians, then its content is not improbable at all.

Fourth, apart from the execution being a stoning (the most common form of execution employed by the Jews, and therefore not at all peculiar to or indicative of Christian victims), this story does not agree with any other account of the death of James 'the brother' of Christ. It therefore is not likely to actually be an account of the death of James the brother of Christ. It certainly was not known to be such by any Christian who composed those later accounts of that legendary figure's death (as we saw in §8).

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[91] Evidence and scholarship on all these points is provided in Carrier, 'Origen, Eusebius'.

[92] The same idiom appears not only in Mt. 1.16, but also in Mt. 27.17 and 27.22; Jn. 4.25; in the Clementine Homilies 18.4.5 and Justin Martyr, Apology 1.30.1 (as well as Dialogue with Trypho 32.1, although perhaps derogatorily). The phrase is frequently quoted from the Gospels throughout Origen's works (e.g. Against Celsus pr.2.12; Commentaries on the Gospel of John 1.5.29; 1.21.126; 13.26; Series of Commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew 255; Scholia on Matthew 17.308) and is used in a related fashion in Origen, Homilies (on Jeremiah) 16.10 and Against Celsus 4.28. And of course in every case where Origen paraphrases Hegesippus and mistakenly attributes the material to Josephus: Origen, Against Celsus 1.47 and 2.13; and Commentary on Matthew 10.17. By contrast, of course, Josephus never elsewhere uses it.

[93] Josephus, Ant. 20.199 (probably referring to Ant. 13.293-98).

[94] Josephus otherwise never uses the word 'Christ' (even where it appears in the TF it is widely regarded as an interpolation even by scholars who accept the authenticity of the TF: Van Voorst, Jesus, pp. 91-92; and as explained in an earlier note, I find Whealey's attempt to defend it implausible). That Josephus often refers readers to his previous discussions of obscure persons and subjects: Paget, 'Some Observations', pp. 553-54. These and other considerations against this passage are further discussed in Olson, 'Eusebius', pp. 314-19.

[95] See the comparable course of events, and elite reaction to it, in Pliny the Younger, Epistles 10.96-97; and of course Tacitus's remarks about popular sentiment in Annals 15.44 (if you accept that passage as authentic), and the representation of elite Jewish reaction to Christianity in Acts (if we are to trust its account at all).


Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. .

To be continued...

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Continued...

Fifth, the book of Acts shows no knowledge of this event. And it is nigh impossible for a Christian of the time to know less than Josephus about the fate of 'James the brother of Jesus Christ' (particularly a Christian claiming to have researched the history of his church: Lk. 1.1-4). In fact Luke makes a point of always depicting the Romans protecting or rescuing Christians from the excesses of Jewish persecution or other dire fates (e.g. Gallio: Acts 18.12-23; Lysias and Festus: Acts 23-24; Roman guards: Acts 16.19-40; 27.42-44), and of depicting some among the Jewish elite as being less negatively disposed towards Christians (Gamaliel: Acts 5.34-42; even Herod Agrippa: Acts 25-26). In its present form, Ant. 20.200 has all of this. Indeed it hands Luke a rhetorical coup: Romans (and Herod Agrippa himself) punishing Jews for persecuting Christians. There is no possible way Luke would have passed up an opportunity to include this in his account. The only explanation for why he didn't that has any probability is that this event never happened - yet it is wholly improbable that Josephus would fabricate it. In fact, as Luke appears to have used Josephus as a source (Chapter 7, §4), Luke could not have found any story about James 'the brother of Christ' in Josephus. Therefore, it wasn't there.

Sixth, and most conclusively, Origen has no knowledge of this passage, despite being intimately familiar with Josephus and citing him often. We can therefore be certain Origen's copy did not contain a reference to Christ, here or anywhere. This has commonly been denied, but in ignorance: where scholars claim Origen is quoting this passage, he is demonstrably not. Meanwhile all other arguments against an interpolation occurring here are only against deliberate interpolation, but that is not what happened; the interpolation of 'called Christ' was more likely an accident. So we already have five argument for, and none against, with a great weight of improbability ruling this passage out of consideration. But this sixth argument settles it: all passages where it is claimed Origen is attesting to Josephus's mention of Christ as the brother of James actually paraphrase a completely different story found only in Hegesippus, a story that is a patent Christian hagiography and thus cannot have originated with Josephus. Origen was simply misattributing it to him.

In each case Origen quotes nothing from Josephus, except the words 'the brother of Jesus who was called Christ', but that's just the combination of two phrases, 'the brother of Jesus' and 'who was called Christ', the former entirely common (and thus not distinctive of Josephus or Christianity) and the latter the accidental interpolation that did not originate with Josephus (for all the reasons already surveyed), but is instead (as I already noted) a well-established Christian idiom, commonly used by Origen. By contrast, Josephus never otherwise uses the word 'Christ', and if he ever did, he would have explained what it meant and why he was using it. That he didn't entails he didn't write those words here. That Origen kept claiming he was paraphrasing Josephus, when instead he was actually paraphrasing Hegesippus, was simply a product of error of memory, which Origen is known for; in fact Hegesippus and Josephus were known to be confused by others, too, so it was evidently an easy mistake to make. [96]

In summary, there is no evidence Josephus ever mentioned Jesus Christ. There is therefore no evidence here to consider.


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[96] A good example of Origen making errors of memory is very much like this one: he confused something he read in the Protevangelium of James (specifically Prot. Jas. §23) as having been in Josephus, and thus incorrectly cites Josephus as his source; see Paget, 'Some Observations', pp. 550-51; and Whealey, Josephus on Jesus, p. 18. The authors Josephus and Hegesippus were also confused in some later manuscripts (thus it is an established error other readers of the time made), and some scholars have already suspected that this is what happened here: Paget, 'Some Observations', pp. 550-51 n. 43.


Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. 341-342.

PD notes: This concludes the section in Carrier's book specifically on supposed Josephan mentions of Jesus & Co, but since its arguments regarding Hegisippus are from another section occurring previous to this one concerning Josephus, I shall include them in a following series of posts on this thread, since it is pertinent to his reasoning here. To be continued...

§« The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. »§

8. Hegesippus

Near the end of the second century (c. 180 CE) the Christian scholar Hegesippus wrote a five-volume Memoirs that discussed various legends about the early churches and apostles (including the first succession lists of bishops), making this the third closest thing to a history of Christianity that existed up to then (the second being the Explanations of Papias, which has been discussed above, and the first being the book of Acts, which we shall discuss in the next chapter). [71] Once again, we do not have this book. We only have scattered references to and quotations from it. Again, why was such a valuable work not preserved? We may never know.

This work is so very late, and written in a period of such rampant fabrication and hearsay (see Element 44), that it cannot have any claim to reliability on the matter of first-century Christianity. Nevertheless, I discuss it because (a) it is the last known attempt at collecting historical data about first-century Christianity that we know of from the second century, (b) it discusses the fate of 'James the brother of Jesus', and (c) it is representative of all the Christian 'historical' literature we have any fragment of from the second century, and thus our conclusions regarding it can be understood as applicable to all.

The most important passages to survive from Hegesippus involve tales about the family of Jesus. But they are so obviously fictional we can place no value in them as history. Of these, the following story about James is the most extensive we have, and it reads just like any of several examples of fabricated 'Acts' (such as we have telling wild tales about Peter and John):

"Hegesippus, who lived immediately after the apostles, gives the most accurate account in the fifth book of his Memoirs. He writes as follows:
James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles. He has been called Just by all from the time of our Savior to the present day, for there were many that bore the name of James. He was holy from his mother's womb; and he drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat flesh. No razor came upon his head; he did not anoint himself with oil, and he did not use the bath. He alone was permitted to enter into the holy place; for he wore not woolen but linen garments. And he was in the habit of entering alone into the temple, and was frequently found upon his knees begging forgiveness for the people, so that his knees became hard like those of a camel, in consequence of his constantly bending them in the worship of God, and asking forgiveness for the people. Because of his exceeding great justice he was called the Just, and Oblias, which signifies in Greek, 'Bulwark of the People' [actually, no such word exists in Greek - ed.], and Justice, in accordance with what the prophets declare concerning him.

Now some persons belonging to the seven [Jewish] sects existing among the people, which have been before described by me in these Memoirs, asked James: 'What is the door of Jesus?' And he replied that He was the Savior. In consequence of this answer, some believed that Jesus is the Christ. But the sects before mentioned did not believe, either in a resurrection or in the coming of one to requite every man according to his works; but those who did believe, believed because of James. So, when many even of the ruling class believed, there was a commotion among the Jews, and scribes, and Pharisees, who said, 'A little more, and we shall have all the people looking for Jesus as the Christ.'

They came, therefore, in a body to James, and said: 'We entreat you, restrain the people: for they are gone astray in their opinions about Jesus, as if he were the Christ. We entreat you to persuade all who have come here for the day of the Passover, concerning Jesus. For we all listen to you; since we, as well as all the people, bear you testimony that you are just, and show partiality to none. Therefore, persuade the people not to entertain erroneous opinions concerning Jesus: for all the people, and we also, listen to you. Take your stand, then, upon the summit of the temple, that from that elevated spot you may be clearly seen, and your words may be plainly audible to all the people. For, in order to attend the Passover, all the tribes have congregated here, and some of the Gentiles also.'

The aforementioned scribes and Pharisees accordingly set James on the summit of the temple, and cried aloud to him, and said, 'Oh just one, whom we are all bound to obey, forasmuch as the people are in error, and follow Jesus the crucified, do tell us what is the door of Jesus the crucified?' And he answered with a loud voice: 'Why ask me concerning Jesus the Son of Man? He Himself sits in heaven, at the right hand of the Great Power, and shall come on the clouds of heaven.'

And, when many were fully convinced by these words, and offered praise for the testimony of James, and said, 'Hosanna to the son of David', then again the Pharisees and scribes said to one another, 'We have not done well in procuring this testimony to Jesus. But let us go up and throw him down, that they may be afraid, and not believe him.' And they cried aloud, and said: 'Oh! Oh! The just man himself is in error.' Thus they fulfilled the Scripture written in Isaiah: 'Let us away with the just man, because he is troublesome to us: therefore shall they eat the fruit of their doings.' So they went up and threw down the just man, and said to one another: 'Let us stone James the Just.' And they began to stone him: for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned, and kneeled down, and said: 'I beseech Thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do'.

And while they were thus stoning him to death, one of the priests, the sons of Rechab, the son of Rechabim, to whom testimony is born by Jeremiah the prophet, began to cry aloud, saying: 'Stop! What are you doing!? The just man is praying for us.' But one among them, one of the fullers, took the staff with which he was accustomed to wring out the garments he dyed, and hurled it at the head of the just man.

And so he suffered martyrdom; and they buried him on the spot, and the pillar erected to his memory still remains, close by the temple. This man was a true witness to both Jews and Greeks that Jesus is the Christ. And immediately Vespasian besieged them." [72]


The historical and narrative implausibilities in this tale are so numerous we can be certain the story is in every respect a fabrication. The description of James is transparently mythical; the notion that 'he alone' was allowed into the temple's inner sanctum is obvious nonsense; that the Jewish authorities would have a Christian evangelist stand at the pinnacle of the temple to dissuade the crowds from adopting his teachings is obvious myth; and that James could survive a fall from there is impossible; in fact the behavior of almost everyone in the whole narrative is not at all realistic (a major hallmark of fiction); the execution of James as described is in no way legal (and would thus have been murder under Jewish law); and a burial not only inside the city's walls but beside the very temple itself is not only a guaranteed falsehood, it betrays the complete ignorance of the narrative's author of even the most basic facts of Jerusalem law and culture. In short, nothing about this story can possibly be true.

But what is notable is that nowhere in the story itself is this James ever said to be the brother of Jesus. Hegesippus describes him as such when introducing the narrative, but the assumption that this story, about a certain James the Just, is a story about James the brother of Jesus, appears to be an assumption introduced by Hegesippus. It is not supported by anything in the story. Indeed, this James is described as if he were a priest (doing service in the temple and even entering the Holy of Holies), not a carpenter or fisherman from distant Galilee. There is also no reference to a historical Jesus in this narrative. Jesus is called 'the crucified' but Jesus was celestially crucified on minimal mythicism [see below], so this does not distinguish this narrative as historicist. To the contrary, nowhere is any reference made to witnesses or reports of Jesus having performed deeds or delivering teachings while on earth, or having even been on earth. Instead, James speaks only of a Jesus in outer space, who would descend to earth in the future. And the story assumes that no one thought Jesus was the Christ until James (not Jesus, nor anyone else) began preaching that he was. And this led to people looking for Jesus and following him - obviously that cannot mean following the living Jesus (who in this narrative was not then on earth), but the celestial Jesus declared by James.

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[71] '[Hegesippus] records in five books the true tradition of apostolic doctrine', Eusebius, History of the Church 4.8, which passage, plus 4.11 and 4.21-22, are all we really have to date the man by, their content indicating that Hegesippus may have been alive in 130 CE (when Hadrian deified Antinous) but wrote after 174 (that being the year of the last datable event mentioned in the 'memoirs' of Hegesippus).

[72] Eusebius, History of the Church 2.23.4-18. Translation adapted from NPNF², I, 207-208.

*Note on 'minimal mythicism,' which is defined thus (Carrier, p.53):

1. At the origin of Christianity, Jesus Christ was thought to be a celestial deity much like any other.

2. Like many other celestial deities, this Jesus 'communicated' with his subjects only through dreams, visions, and other forms of divine inspiration (such as prophecy, past and present).

3. Like some other celestial deities, this Jesus was originally believed to have endured an ordeal of incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection in a supernatural realm.

4. As for many other celestial deities, an allegorical story of this same Jesus was then composed and told within the sacred community, which placed him on earth in history, as a divine man, with an earthly family, companions, and enemies, complete with deeds and sayings, and an earthly depiction of his ordeals.

5. Subsequent communities of worshipers believed (or at least taught) that this invented sacred story was real (and either not allegorical or only 'additionally' allegorical).

Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. 326-329; 53.

To be continued...

§« The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. »§

Continued...

The controversy at the heart of this narrative also centers around the bizarre question, 'What is the door of Jesus?' The answer to which was that 'he is the Savior' (the name 'Jesus' of course meaning 'savior'), implying that confessing Jesus is the Christ is the doorway to eternal life. The theological point may have had something to do with Jesus being the celestial high priest, who controlled access to the doors of heaven (which even some pre-Christian Jews might already have believed: Element 40). For example, Ignatius says Jesus 'is the door of the Father, by which enter' the holy and faithful into heaven, and that he had this power because he was given the secrets of God and controlled the Holy of Holies - which must mean that of the celestial temple, there being no other when Ignatius wrote. [73]

The material about James in Hegesippus confirms our conclusions from Papias, that true historical information about the early church no longer existed and had been replaced with absurd fabrications like this, which were believed without any doubt or question by such authors as this. But this narrative also joins the early redaction of the Ascension of Isaiah and the Star Narrative of Ignatius in further support of the hypothesis that there had been a sect of Christians who did not believe in a Galilean Jesus but only a cosmically crucified one, and that these Christians had their own tales and narratives, which other Christians could borrow and adapt to their own purposes. From such a sect we can expect this tale to lack any reference to a historical Jesus, most especially any reference to this James being his brother, despite it going on a great deal about his qualifications as a witness in being superlatively pious and just - conspicuously omitting from that list of qualifications his family connection and eyewitness status. These appear to have been unknown to the story's original author.

Such a complete absence of the historical Jesus in this James narrative could perhaps be explained away as just a happenstance omission, assuming that the author who made it all up just didn't think or see the need of quoting any such detail, or perhaps already having included it in sections not quoted by Hegesippus [PD: 'or by Eusebius, on whom we rely for the transmission of this passage']. But such an omission also fits minimal mythicism even more perfectly. Whereas the historicist's explanation requires positing something that is less than 100% certain to be the case, the mythicist's explanation does not require positing anything (beyond minimal mythicism itself, and established background knowledge, including Elements 21-22 and 44). That means this narrative in Hegesippus supports mythicism over historicity, at least slightly. I will be as generous to historicity as I can and posit a 90% chance a historicist author could compose the narrative as we have it, against a 100% chance that a mythicist could, for 9/10 odds. Although I believe 4 in 5 is closer to the truth (meaning an 80% chance a historicist author could compose the narrative like this).

Hegesippus recorded at least one other apocryphal tale about the family of Jesus, which can confirm neither historicity nor myth: the story that the grandchildren of his brother Jude (whom only 'some said' had been the brother of Jesus) were hauled into the court of Domitian (in the 80s or 90s CE), because Domitian was afraid of the Second Coming of Christ (historically, a wholly implausible motive) and had commanded that all Davidic heirs (even though the very notion that anyone thought there would be Davidic heirs to slay by then is not believable). [74] This story contains a number of implausibilities and does not look like anything we would credit as true. It also looks like it wasn't originally a story about Christians, but messianic Jews. In the core of the tale itself, no Jesus is ever mentioned, and the 'Judeans' hauled into court are never said to be anything but Jews expecting a messiah to come at the end of the world. This had apparently been converted into a story about Domitian persecuting, and then ending the persecution, of Christians. But from other sources we know only of Domitian persecuting Jews, and only those in his own household. [75]

Whatever the case may be, Hegesippus tips his hand when we learn from Eusebius that he told all of these narratives in order to 'prove' that there had been no heresy before the reign of Trajan, because up until then the family of Jesus and his disciples had everywhere ensured a faithful adherence to the 'virgin' gospel, and only after they had passed away did false sects arise. [76] Such a fantasy is not only certainly false (the Epistles of Paul already attest to numerous schisms, including his own, and there had surely been countless further splits all through the first century), it is also an obvious motive for inventing tales of family and eyewitnesses to Jesus. [77] And from the details found in the stories he told, we can tell they are unbelievable. Nor is any source given for them. So no reliable support for historicity can be had here. The probability of there being such tales is the same on either theory.

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[73] Ignatius, Philadephians 9. Other references to Jesus being 'the door' or 'the gate' can be found in Jn. 10.6-19 and 1 Clement 48 (based on Ps. 117.19-20).

[74] Eusebius, History of the Church 3.19-20 (Eusebius wrote in the early fourth century). Vespasian is supposed to have slain all the Davidic heirs already (3.12), which is almost as implausible; 3.11 also mentions the family of Jesus, with details that might derive from Hegesippus, such as that the Gospel figure of Clopas was the brother of the Joseph who was the father of Jesus: nothing is said of how Hegesippus would have known this - probably it is just an interpretation of Jn. 19.25, which itself is probably fabricated. It's possible, as well, that the entire succession narrative Eusebius surveys came from Hegesippus, indeed much of it could be the latter's own invention (cf., e.g. Eusebius, History of the Church 3.32), the same way rabbinical authors invented haggadah for the persons named in the Gospels.

[75] Suetonius, Domitian 10; and Dio Cassius, Roman History 67.14 (both authors certainly knew the difference between Christians and Jews). It was only later Christian legend that converted this event into a persecution of Christians. See Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith, p. 154.

[76] Eusebius, History of the Church 3.32.

[77] Confirming the Noll thesis (see §12).

Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), pp. 329-331.

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Bump!

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