Comments on: messiah that, josephus!

By: TheoHacks » Blog Archive » TheoHacks #3: Happy Holidays!

TheoHacks » Blog Archive » TheoHacks #3: Happy Holidays! — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 18:13:43 +0000

[...] Show Notes: The Nativity Story’s True Message - John Dominic Crossan article Messiah That, Josephus! - an old blog post by John talking about the Caesar language of Luke 2 The Character Matrix - Erwin McManus message from Veritas Invisible Children Dirty Little Secrets podcast - not mentioned in this episode but listen to their interview with Bobby from Invisible Children in their 12th episode [...]

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:59:13 +0000

Mind blowing… Conrad…whoa

By: john

john — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:56:22 +0000

Conrad,
Thanks for all the thoughts you’ve shared.

Jamie,
As Conrad noted above, there is lots of information available out there regarding the us of Caesar language in connection with Jesus. It absolutely fascinates me…

By: jamie

jamie — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:07:53 +0000

John, that is so strange that you are the second person I have heard comparing the evangelion of Caesar with the evangelion of Christ in the same week. It was this guy I just met who is a home church planter named Doug, lives in CO–check him out at http://www.miunow.com

By: Conrad

Conrad — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 10:52:27 +0000

This is good historical digging. There is very likely to be a connection between the kind of language used to describe the Caesars and that used for Jesus in the New Testament. The difficulty is not with establishing correlation but with being certain of causation. The temptation is to see the Romans doing their thing in isolation and seeing Christianity and Judaism as borrowing and reacting. But it’s not just that the Christians were making political claims, it’s also beyond dispute that the politicians were making religious claims and these claims were probably deliberately inclusive of exotic, eastern religious traditions. Way before the gospels or the epistles were written, before Jesus was born, the coins of the empire were using the word “Saviour” of the emperor. Remember the coin that Jesus asked to have as a prop for his “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” routine? It was probably inscribed “Tiberias Caesar, son of the divine Augustus”. Son of the divine! If Jesus was who we think he is, the Christians would have had to go out of their way not to use similar language.

Given the widespread nature of Roman propaganda, it becomes very hard to establish any necessary or definite link with Josephus. Luke was a Gentile writer and some of us believe that he was writing for Gentile readers. It seems much more likely that he would replying to Roman propaganda directly rather than replying to Josephus.

It’s probably just as likely that Josephus, who knows of both John the Baptist and of Jesus, is replying to Christian claims about Jesus in a way calculated to show the non-Christian Jews as good citizens of the Empire and the Christians as those making anti-Roman claims.

Here’s the payoff: For the case about Luke responding to Josephus to be persuasive, you would want to demonstrate several passages where Luke echoes things in Josephus that are unique to Josephus (as far as we know). These connections could take the form of exact verbal parallels or of collocation of ideas. The key thing is the more unusual in the literature and numerous the points of contact are, the more likely that Luke and Josephus are directly connected.

Stephen Mason is probably the top guy on this stuff just now; he’s written a lot on Josephus. the book I’d start with is his 1992 book for Hendrickson publishers, Josephus and the New Testament.