Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
On Josephus...
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The absence of the messianic elements in the
Testimonium Flavium in the Arabic translation provide extremely good support to the existence of an earlier edition of the report that had later been tampered with. Leading expert and Jewish scholar Louis Feldman has argued very persuasively that the passage is genuine, but that it has been grossly amended.
It should also not come as any surprise that the Apostolic Fathers did not make mention of Josephus's account, as it was very likely really a very mundane account at the time. During Tertullian's and Justin Martyr's day, there was no real need to argue the existence of a man named Jesus, as there was really no reason to doubt that this man had lived and died in Palestine. What they devoted much of their own energies to was to arguing for the miraculous nature of Jesus, that he was in fact the messiah, and that he physically rose from the dead. Considering that these are all things that Josephus would have never believed, it is difficult to understand why the Apostolic Fathers would have ever found much value in his writings concerning Jesus.