All right.
The main reason Agapios' version of the Testimonium matters (and the reason people like Stone ascribe such dramatic importance to it) is because of its striking textual differences from the
textus receptus version. Whealey focuses on the following variations: the emphasis on Jesus
dying on the cross, the mention of how Jesus' disciples merely
reported that He appeared to them after the resurrection, the lack of a mention of Jewish leaders' role in Jesus' death, the toning down of the descriptions of Jesus deeds to seem less miraculous, and the description of Jesus as "perhaps" the Messiah.
Because of the evident similarities between Agapios' version of the Testimonium and Michael's version, Whealey argues that both were using the same source: a Syriac version of Eusebius'
Historia Ecclesiastica, and the first textual variation, the emphasis on Jesus' death on the cross, gave her a clue as to what that might have been. Both Agapios and Michael have this same textual variation...as does a Syriac manuscript of
Historia Ecclesiastica dated to the 8th or 9th Century (called "Manuscript C") kept in the British Library. This manuscript's version of the Testimonium reads "Pilate condemned him to death by crucifixion", containing an interpolation of the words "to death" that does not appear in either Manuscript A of the Syriac
Historia Ecclesiastica (dated to 462) or Manuscript B (dated to the 6th Century). In addition, both Manuscript C and Michael's version omit the word "again" in the sentence "for he appeared to them alive again the third day". The fact that this phrasing emphasizing that Jesus actually died on the cross does not appear in these Syriac versions of the
Historia dating to before the Muslim conquests, only after, suggests that this was an interpolation by later Christian writers to clarify that yes, Jesus died on the cross and returned to life, because otherwise the version of the Testimonium that they had was vulnerable to Muslim arguments that Jesus did not
actually die on the cross.
Manuscript C also renders as "for He appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning Him" as "for after three days He appeared to them alive:
it is known that the prophets of God said these things and many wonders like these things about Him". Whealey notes that no early Greek or Latin translation of the Testimonium contains the particular "it is known" phrasing or anything resembling it, which makes it unlikely to original to Josephus. However, if Agapios' source text contained the same "it is known" phrasing as Manuscript C did, then he could have paraphrased that as "
they made known" (ie, "they
reported"), and associated it with the disciples mentioned in the first part of the sentence rather than the prophets of God mentioned in the second part. Thus is Agapios' final version of that sentence, "they made known (or ‘reported’:
dhakaru) that He appeared to them three days after His crucifixion and He was alive; accordingly He was perhaps the Messiah about whom the prophets have spoken wonders".
However, other textual variations indicate that Michael and Agapios were not using Manuscript C directly, but another (now apparently lost) version, because the lack of any mention of Jewish leaders' role in Jesus' death can be tied to what appears to be a scribal error in the Syriac version of the
Historia used by them. The
textus receptus reads "Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross", rendered in the standard Syriac version as "upon the testimony of the principal men of our nation, Pilate condemned him to the cross". But Michael's version reads "but
not according to testimony of the principal men of our nation" (the same variation appears in Manuscript A, the earliest extant version of the Syriac
Historia dated to 462 AD). Whealey argues that this appears connect the Testimonium's sentence about the Jewish leaders' testimony to being about Jesus' Messiahood, and not to Pilate's execution of Him. Therefore, when Agapios' read that sentence which appeared to say "He was thought to be the Messiah, but
not according to the testimony of the principal men among our nation. Pilate condemned Him to death by crucifixion", he just shortened it in his paraphrase to "Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die", not mention Jewish leaders' role in Jesus' death because he mistakenly didn't think the source text he was paraphrasing said anything about Jewish leaders' role in Jesus' death. Whealey also speculates that Michael, whose source text read the same, inserted the phrase "because of this" into his manuscript in an effort to correct this apparent error, rendering that section as "He was thought to be the Messiah. But
not according to the leaders of the nation.
Because of this, Pilate condemned him to the cross, and he died."
Whealey points out that Pines himself recognized that the "toning down" of Jesus' deeds into something ostensibly less miraculous is easily explained by the texts. Although the
textus receptus description of Jesus as a "doer of wonderful works", it's clear that even in Josephus' original Greek that this is not a description of miracles, because the
textus receptus uses the exact same description in Greek to describe King Ptolemy's remarkable but not really miraculous deeds ("he was sagacious in observing the nature of all things, and in having a just notion of what was new and surprising"), as well as the rather mundane description of Joab ("one...who was also adept in understanding political matters"). Both Michael's version and the standard Syriac version of the
Historia translate the Greek
parádoxos érgon (incredible works) as a word that I unfortunately have no transcription for, but which Pines and Whealey both say can mean simply "praiseworthy" or "fine" (Pines himself translates it as "glorious" in his renderings of both Michael's version and the standard Syriac version). As a result, if Michael's version is the same one that Agapios was using, Agapios could have easily read "For He was a doer of praiseworthy/fine deeds and a teacher of truth" as found in that source, and paraphrased/translated it into Arabic as "His conduct [or way of life, the Arabic reads
sira, the
same word used for accounts of the life of the Prophet Muhammad] was good and [He] was known to be virtuous".
Finally, there's the qualification that Jesus was "perhaps" the Messiah, rather than the firm statement of fact as found in the
textus receptus Testimonium. Whealey points out that Pines also notes that this qualification can be found in
Jerome's Latin translation of the Testimonium, which reads "credebatur esse Christus" ("believed to be Christ"). Pines argues that the Syriac and Latin writers did not read one anothers' works, this Latin phrasing of Jerome's can't have influenced the presumed Syriac source used by Michael and Agapios, and so both Jerome and Michael/Agapios must be using sources that are derived from an older Greek version of Eusebius'
Historia that read something like "He was believed to be the Christ". Where
that version of the
Historia derived from, however, is unknown - there is no known version of the text in Greek, whether in the
Historia or the
Antiquities, that reads "He was believed to be the Christ". The closest thing is
Pseudo-Hegesippus Latin original composition
De excidio urbis Hierosolymitanae, which reads "plerique tamen Judaeorum, gentilium plurimi crediderunt in eum" ("both most of the Jews and very many of the Gentiles believed in Him"), which Whealey compares to Jerome's "plurimos quoque tamen de Judais quam de gentilibus sui habuit sectores et credebatur esse Christus" ("many of the Jews and some of the Gentiles believed Him to be Christ"), and believes that Pseudo-Hegesippus' version is a positive paraphrase of an original text that Jerome translated more literally.
