Josephus Flavius

Okay MAPers, help me out here. I need some informed opinions.

I'm researching early Christianity and I come upon Testimonium Flavianumin, which allegedly contains references to Jesus and his brother, James. 89 words contained in 2 passages refer to him and tell about the crucifixion, the stoning of James, and the unjust death of John the baptist.

However, common sense is throwing up red flags. Namely:

Josephus was captured during the Jewish-Roman war. His wife and parents were killed by the romans during the siege of Jerusalem. He was seen as a traitor, and all of his works were apparently destroyed. The earliest copies of his works don't appear until the middle ages. How are they then considered any way authentic? If the first people to have copies of his work were Catholic monks?

Any thoughts on this would really be appreciated.

As far as the other references are concerned; the gospel of Mark wasn't even written until 60 c.e., which would have made Mark a very old man. The next gospel was John, and even the lists of the name's of his 12 disciples varies. This is extremely confusing. I'm finding it really hard to reconcile these revelations with my common sense.

Can anyone make any informed commentary regarding how Josephus Flavius' work would have survived being destroyed? If they were destroyed, wouldn't his Testimonium be complete fiction? HELP!

 

Stuff like that generally survives in spite of gaps in written copies of the tale because religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism etc, all share the same source aspects as earlier religions, cults such as that of Horas, Mithra etc, (pick any religion you like). They are all basically versions of Zoroastroism, which itself (like all other religions) is an allegory for the movement of celestial bodies and how they affect the seasons on Earth, which is what people were really wporshipping, just in allegorical form since they knew little of real astonomical facts. This explains why most religions have a saviour represented as being born on the 25 December; one whose arrival is heralded by three kings. The story of the Saviour's arrival is in fact an allegorical explanation for the coming of the Winter Solstice and the changing seasons which follow it, bringing the season of bountiful crops and new animal life in the spring.

Take Christmas, the three kings and Easter for example; cut through the allegorical aspects and you get this: Sirius (the brightest star in the East), aligns with the three bright stars in Orion's belt on the 24th December; this alignment points to the location on the horizon where the sun rises on the 25th of December (i.e. it is the 'birth of the saviour'', the coming of the ''light of the world'', or whatever other cosmic-sounding name you want to give it). Before the sun rises from that position on the horizon on the 25th, its position relative to Earth remains almost stationary under the Southern Cross constellation for the 22nd, 23rd and 24th December, after which, it heralds the arrival of longer days, warmth and the season where life begins with new crops and the birth of animals around the time that Easter is celebrated (which is why you get chicks and easter eggs representing new life as symbols of Easter in Christianity).

This also explains where you get the ''sun dies on the cross and is dead for three days until it rises'' mythology that is in many religions, because in astonomical terms when viewed from Earth, that's exactly what Sol does. You will find that most religious symbolism is directly related to such astrological, astronomical and seasonal phenomena, which demonstrates why religious texts can happily survive gaps in the continuity of literary works and the destruction of texts relating to it, yet still keep the tale reasonably consistent.

For example, the twelve disciples (common in most religions in some shape or form) are the twelve constellations of the zodiac, which the sun (the saviour) travels in the company of, so you can see where the tales of Jesus travelling about with 12 disciples whilst perfoming miracles come from.

The fact that the disciples were in the main fishermen and why Christianity's symbol is the fish, is because the life of Jesus began in the astrological age of Pisces, which commenced in 1AD. Prior to that it was the age of Aries the Ram, which began in 2150BC and is what Moses represented. This is where the story of Moses being upset at people worshipping a golden calf comes from, since that represented the preceding age of Taurus the bull. Thus it becomes clear that as long as you have the astrological calendar to go off, you don't need the scriptures to survive in order to have the basis for the allegorical tale survive a few books going missing, or someone swapping sides and b*ggering off to Rome with Vespasian for that matter.

All of this explains why 'the son of god, being the light of the world, will rise again', because this is in fact what happens for real when you understand the allegory; the sun does indeed rise again and it does save the world from darkness, every day in fact, so the bible and other religious texts are completely true in what they say, just so long as you understand that what they are saying is an allegorical message about astronomy and the seasons and not what most religious nutters think such sacred scripts are about, notwithstanding governments also using them in edited forms as means to control the populace in later years. It may therefore come as a surprise to atheists to learn that all religions based on this allegory are in fact true in what they proclaim, providing one understands how to decode what in actuality they are proclaiming. Sadly however, if you try and point out this factual explanation of things to most religious people, they tend to become anything but religious about it and will instead invariably get angry, and the atheists will probably be angry too, since it means they were wrong as well lol. And then you'll get crucified by both groups if you are not careful, and not necessarily in an allegorical way either. This is where martial arts training may come in handy.

Al

 

I doubt that seeing as what you posted is what a lot of Atheists would use as an argument. It only confirms their stance that there isn't an old wizard in the sky that watches your every move.

In fact I remember the Zetageist movie being quite popular among my Atheist friends when it first came out.

 

So nothing to do with this then?

 

Jah, all of what was said is good. I'm still wondering how the testimonium would have survived.....

The more research I've done the more plain it's become that modern Christianity is just a big nasty old building with the Torah (loosely at that) as it's dusty old basement, it's building is a pagan Roman structure with loose ties to the historical Jesus, and the attic is where the goblins keep their gold.

Do you guys have fundamentalist christians in GB? Yuck, dude.

 

No, it DOES matter if Mark was old. I have trouble remembering what I ate for lunch sometimes. After 30 years, most memories are so obscured by time that no testimony could be pristine.

Nah, I read the bible cover to cover. The book is not really something to be using for moral guidance (rape, slavery, vengence, hate, wrath, scorn, sexual repression, mysogyny, long hair, short hair, etc). But that's not the tidbit I'm really chasing here.

I'm really trying to see if some liberal art student on this site might know how the heck the testimonium survived being destroyed (because all of his works were apparently destroyed.) and if they WERE destroyed how the heck the vatican got their hands on it, and such.

 

It seems possible that the Testimonium Flavianum may have survived due to reproductions in Arabic in the east.

A short bout of google-fu suggests at least 2 copies have existed in arabic along side other works by both an Arab-Christian, Agapius, around the 10'th century as well as another by Michael the Syrian in the 12'th.

Indeed if you follow the links on wikipedia to the work in which the Testimonium is contained (Antiquities of the Jews) it makes reference to recently recovered Arabic versions.

There also appears to be a number of medieval copies in Greek. Further to this, many parts apparently still exist in quotes that other Christian writers used, which allows for it to be at least partial recompiled.