As I have written, this point is decisive:
Hence the best case for the authenticity of the Baptist Passage can't overcome this obstacle, hence at most allowing only for an agnostic position as final verdict.
...since who are us to exorcise the suspicion, and only the suspicion, that Origen was quoting Hegesippus also about John the Baptist, so rapidly he leaps from the reference to James (verified by critical exegesis as deriving from Hegesippus) to the reference to John the Baptist ?(2) has a response based on Rivka Nir that suggests that Origen was not referring to the passage on John in the 18th book of the Antiquities. I must agree with you that I hadn’t considered that suggestion when I wrote my essay, which must explain why I presented the argument based on the assumption that Origen did.
Hence the best case for the authenticity of the Baptist Passage can't overcome this obstacle, hence at most allowing only for an agnostic position as final verdict.
Statistics: Posted by Giuseppe — Wed Jan 17, 2024 10:01 pm