So the Myther dodge is that because both in this passage (that's
Commentarii in evangelium Matthaei X.17) and in the other two where he uses the exact phrase we find in XX.9.1, Origen claims Josephus says things we don't find said in Josephus, he must have been referring to some other text or to some interpolated form of
Antiquities XX.9.1. Problem solved.
Except, it isn't.
Anyone who has actually read Origen fully and studied the scholarship on how he uses references to material like Josephus (that rules out pretty much every Myther on the planet) knows that when Origen tells us one of his sources "says" or "reports" something, he's not using his source like a modern historian, or even an ancient one. Origen was a Christian exegete and he used all of his sources with the intention of explicating the truth of the Scriptures and the (for him) unquestionable veracity of the Christian message. So Origen regularly tells us of his sources "saying" or "reporting" things that they don't actually say or report - he imposes his interpretation via his Christian conviction on them.
For example, looking at another reference to Josephus by Origen, in
Fragmenta in Lamentationes, Nr. 109, Lam 4,14 he refers to
Jewish War VI.5.3 but changes details of what Josephus reports to make them fit his exegesis on
Lamentations. Or in
Fragmenta in Lamentationes, Nr. 115, Lam 4,19 he claims:
"Josephus reports that even the mountains did not save those who were trying to escape."
But Josephus actually "reports" no such thing. Origen is reading that into what Josephus actually says and then telling us that he "reports" it when he doesn't - this is purely Origen's interpretation.
So if we turn to what Origen similarly says about what Josephus "says" or "reports" about the death of James, we are reading his interpretation: one biased by his idea that all history since Jesus has revolved around him and his followers.
The idea that the execution of James triggered a sequence of events that led to the destruction of the Temple seems to be an old one and certainly seems to predate Origen's comments on
Antiquities XX.9.1. Hegesippus ends his account of the execution of James by saying:
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 shortly after Vespasian besieged Judaea, taking them captive.(H.E. II.23.18)
The idea that the fall of Jerusalem was connected to and caused by the execution of James became a standard trope, being mentioned also by Eusebius (though following Origen) and Jerome and implied in Gnostic traditions about James.
And reading the rest of
Antiquities XX (ie chapters 9 and 11), it is easy to see why an exegete like Origen would read Josephus this way. Because Josephus details how Ananus' fall from his former position encouraged him to wield influence through bribery and currying favour with gifts thanks to wealth he gained from extortionate religious taxes (XX.9.2). This led to the
sicarii rebels (the villains of Josephus' account of the Jewish War) targeting him via the kidnapping of his son, Eleazar, forcing Ananus to lean on Albinus to release captured
sicarii in exchange for his son (XX.9.3). This was followed by Albinus trying to gain favour with the increasingly fractious priests by releasing even more
sicarii rebels so that "the prisons were indeed emptied, but the country was filled with rebel bandits" (XX.9.5).
He presents this sequence of events as the precursors of the procuratorship of Gessius Florus and as the background to the environment of political dispute, rebel banditry and Roman violence and oppression which triggered the rebellion that he had already detailed in his earlier work, the
Jewish War.
Naturally
we can see that Josephus isn't saying these things happened because of the execution of James and isn't connecting James to them in anything but an incidental way. But
Origen didn't read his sources that way - he read them through the lenses of faith and "saw" connections and causes in this sequence of events where Josephus details how " as for the affairs of the Jews, they grew worse and worse continually" and how this sequence led to the fall of Jerusalem. Like Hegesippus, and others, the place of the execution of James in this sequence was not
hoc post hoc but rather
hoc propter hoc.
This explains why Origen tells his readers that Josephus "says" things and "reports" things that we can see are not explicit in Josephus at all. And it does so without resorting to suppositions about a hypothetical redaction of Josephus that does explicitly "say" these things but which is found nowhere in the textual tradition.
Because that supposition is highly problematic. As I've already noted, the idea that James' execution brought the punishment of the destruction of the Temple down on the priesthood was already a trope in the Christian tradition. If there had been a redaction of Josephus which claimed this explicitly it makes no sense that it would be cited by Origen in these three passages and then disappear altogether - other Christian writers would have used it and it would have been likely to have been preserved. After all, the fact that the TF is not quoted or referred to in its current form until Eusebius is, correctly, used to indicate that it did not exist in its current (interpolated) form prior to the Fourth Century. The same argument works here.
Yet we see no sign of this hypothetical redaction and there is no reference to it anywhere else. This doesn't make sense. That Origen was doing his usual creative reading of his sources when he refers to what Josephus "says" fits the evidence better.
Which leaves us with "
Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ" being quoted in the mid Third Century and clear evidence that this IS how Josephus described Jesus in his account of the execution of James.
However you cut it, the Myther attempts to wriggle away from the implications of
Antiquities XX.9.1 all totally
fail:
- The claim Χριστοῦ would have been "unintelligible" fails - it was understood by Greek speakers to mean "Anointed".
- The claim this nickname would have been explained to his readers fails - Josephus often referred to such names without explaining them.
- The claim that "Jesus, who was called Anointed" is the same person as "Jesus, the son of Damenus" fails on multiple counts, particularly because it is the absolute opposite of the careful way Josephus refers to and differentiates between people with the same name.
- The claim that either the phrase "who was called Anointed" or just the word "Anointed" are interpolations fails - the verbatim quotes in three places in Origen's works show that it is original.
So even if we don't go down the rabbit hole of debate about the TF, this reference to Jesus on its own kills Mytherism dead. One reference by Josephus is enough to establish the existence of several other such First Century preachers, prophets and miracle workers so it's enough for Jesus as well. At least for any objective person without an ideological bias and a big emotional anti-Christian axe to grind. Anyone who doesn't accept a clear identification of a contemporary of Josephus via a reference to his historical brother in the context of events that Josephus himself witnessed as a young man is simply not wanting to be convinced.
