Editing Josephus on Jesus (section)

== Extant manuscripts ==
[[File:WorksJosephus1640TP.jpg|thumb|upright=0.85|A 1640 edition of the ''Works of Josephus'']]
Josephus wrote all of his surviving works after his establishment in Rome ({{circa|AD&nbsp;71}}) under the patronage of the Flavian Emperor [[Vespasian]]. As is common with ancient texts, however, there are no known manuscripts of Josephus' works that can be dated before the eleventh century, and the oldest which do survive were copied by Christian monks.{{sfn|Feldman|Hata|1989|p=431}} Jews are not known to have preserved the writings of Josephus perhaps because he was considered a traitor,{{sfn|Flavius Josephus|Leeming|Osinkina|Leeming|2003|p=26}} or because his works circulated in Greek, the use of which declined among Jews shortly after Josephus' era.

There are about 120 extant Greek manuscripts of Josephus, of which 33 predate the fourteenth century, with two thirds from the [[Komnenos]] period.{{sfn|Baras|1987|p=369}} The earliest surviving Greek manuscript that contains the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' is the eleventh-century Ambrosianus 370 (F 128), preserved in the [[Biblioteca Ambrosiana]] in Milan, which includes almost all of the second half of the ''Antiquities''.{{sfn|Mason|2001|p=LI}} There are about 170 extant Latin translations of Josephus, some of which go back to the sixth century. According to [[Louis Feldman]] these have proven very useful in reconstructing the Josephus texts through comparisons with the Greek manuscripts, confirming proper names and filling in gaps.{{sfn|Feldman|1984}} One of the reasons the works of Josephus were copied and maintained by Christians was that his writings provided a good deal of information about a number of figures mentioned in the New Testament, and the background to events such as the death of James during a gap in Roman governing authority.{{sfn|Van Voorst|2000|p=83}}

=== Slavonic Josephus ===
{{Main|Slavonic Josephus}}
The three references found in [[wikisource:The Antiquities of the Jews/Book XVIII|Book 18]] and [[wikisource:The Antiquities of the Jews/Book XX|Book 20]] of the ''Antiquities'' do not appear in any other versions of ''[[The Jewish War]]'' except for a [[Church Slavonic language|Slavonic]] version of the ''Testimonium Flavianum'' (at times called ''{{lang|la|Testimonium Slavonium}}'') which surfaced in the west at the beginning of the twentieth century, after its discovery in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century.{{sfn|Van Voorst|2000|p=85}}{{sfn|Creed|1932}}

Although originally hailed as authentic (notably by [[Robert Eisler]]), it is now almost universally acknowledged by scholars to have been the product of an eleventh-century creation as part of a larger ideological struggle against the [[Khazars]].{{sfn|Bowman|1987|pp=373–374}} As a result, it has little place in the ongoing debate over the authenticity and nature of the references to Jesus in the ''Antiquities''.{{sfn|Bowman|1987|pp=373–374}} [[Craig A. Evans]] states that although some scholars had in the past supported the ''Slavonic Josephus'', "to my knowledge no one today believes that they contain anything of value for Jesus research".{{sfn|Chilton|Evans|1998|p=451}}

=== Arabic and Syriac Josephus ===
In 1971, a tenth-century Arabic version of the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' from the [[chronicle]] of [[Agapius of Hierapolis]] was brought to light by [[Shlomo Pines]], who also discovered a twelfth-century [[Syriac language|Syriac]] version of the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' in the chronicle of [[Michael the Syrian]].{{sfn|Pines|1971|p=19}}{{sfn|Maier|2007|pp=336–337}}{{sfn|Feldman|2006|pp=329–330}} These additional manuscript sources of the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' have furnished additional ways to evaluate Josephus' mention of Jesus in the ''Antiquities'', principally through a close textual comparison between the Arabic, Syriac and Greek versions to the ''Testimonium''.{{sfn|Kostenberger|Kellum|Quarles|2009|pp=104–108}}{{sfn|Van Voorst|2000|p=97}}

There are subtle yet key differences between the Greek manuscripts and these texts. For instance, the Arabic version does not blame the Jews for the death of Jesus. The key phrase "at the suggestion of the principal men among us" reads instead "Pilate condemned him to be crucified".<ref>''The historical Jesus: ancient evidence for the life of Christ'' by Gary R. Habermas 1996 ISBN p. 194</ref>{{sfn|Kostenberger|Kellum|Quarles|2009|pp=104–108}} Instead of "he was Christ", the Syriac version has the phrase "he was believed to be Christ".{{sfn|Vermes|2011|pp=33–44}} Drawing on these textual variations, scholars have suggested that these versions of the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' more closely reflect what a non-Christian Jew might have written.{{sfn|Maier|2007|pp=336–337}}

==== Potential dependence on Eusebius ====
In 2008, however, [[Alice Whealey]] published an article arguing that Agapius' and Michael's versions of the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' are not independent witnesses to the original text of Josephus' ''Antiquities''. Rather, they both ultimately derive from the Syriac translation of the ''[[Ecclesiastical History (Eusebius)|Ecclesiastical History]]'' written by [[Eusebius]], which in turn quotes the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}''. Whealey notes that Michael's Syriac ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' shares several peculiar choices of vocabulary with the version found in the Syriac translation of the ''Ecclesiastical History''. These words and phrases are not shared by an independent Syriac translation of the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' from Eusebius' book ''Theophania'', strongly indicating that Agapius's text is simply a paraphrased quotation from the Syriac ''Ecclesiastical History'', and not a direct quotation of Josephus himself. Michael's text, in contrast, she concludes is much closer to what Josephus actually wrote.{{sfn|Whealey|2008|pp=578-579}}

One of the key prongs in her argument is that Agapius' and Michael's ''{{lang|la|Testimonia}}'' share the unique peculiarity that they both explicitly state that Jesus died after being condemned to the cross, while the Greek original does not include this detail. According to Whealey, the differences between the two ''{{lang|la|Testimonia}}'' are simply due to the fact that Agapius' chronicle more freely paraphrases and abbreviates its sources, whereas Michael's version is probably a verbatim copy.{{sfn|Whealey|2008|p=578}} The implication of this argument, if valid, is that Agapius' abbreviated ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' cannot be an earlier version of the passage than what we find in extant manuscripts of Josephus' ''Antiquities''.

Whealey furthermore notices that Michael's version of the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'' shares common features with Jerome's Latin translation. Most importantly for her, instead of "he was the Messiah", as in the Greek ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}'', Jerome's and Michael's versions both read, "he was thought to be the Messiah". She considers it likely, therefore, that the Latin and Arabic translations go back to an original Greek version with the same reading.{{sfn|Whealey|2008|pp=580–581}} Since they otherwise have no substantial disagreement from the Greek version we possess, and since that sole variant is sufficient to explain the most powerful objections to the ''{{lang|la|Testimonium}}''{{'}}s integrity, she concludes that it is "the only major alteration" that has been made to what Josephus originally wrote.{{sfn|Whealey|2008|p=588}}