Not to distract Ken from deadlined work, and so just following Giuseppe's prompt about the 'purpose of baptism' portion of the received passage.You are correct. That is a serious argument and deserves a considered answer. I'm trying to finish off a writing project within the next two days, but I hope to get to it soon....
I believe that this is another example of Eusebius inserting his own comments into a streaming quote, later misintrepreted as a block quote from Josephus rather than two block quotes interrupted with a comment. There was no punctuation to disambiguate this, and scribes resolved the confusion in favor of transmitting a single block quote, as if uninterrupted, as if all from Jospehus.we have had an intense discussion on this presumed quote by Origen but I see that none has yet answered to this my (really: Rivka Nir's) last objection in that thread.
I agree with Nir that Origen had attributed the Christian interpretation of Christian baptism to John's baptism. While I see no pretense at verbatim quotation in Origen on this point (pace Giuseppe), a reasonable reading of Origen is that he is saying that Josephus addressed the issue and that Josephus held that John's baptism was offered as efficacious for remission.
Which bring us to the Olson Challenge:
IMO, Eusebius is the author of the comment about baptism and the comment serves Eusebius's purpose of correcting a factual error in Origen's report. Josephus did not attribute to John's baptism the Christians' view of Christian baptism, contrary to Origen's claim. If Origen erred about what Josephus wrote, then it is irrelevant what Eusebius thought about John's baptism, he is commenting on what Josephus had written about it (according to what Eusebius was reading), in order to correct what Origen misreported. No other purpose of Eusebius's regarding baptism is needed.This would seem odd unless Eusebius himself is the author and it serves some purpose of his regarding baptism. I do not think it does, but anyone who wants to try to make that case is free to do so.
Sorting through the wreckage, I agree that this specific remark about baptism is likely to be "interpolated," although without intention to put words on Josephus's page, even though that is what eventually happened. As for the rest of the passage, the muddying of the sin remission issue provides no reason to discount the rest of Eusebius's report of the state of the text available to him, which is all he can testify about in any case.
Statistics: Posted by Paul the Uncertain — Tue Jan 30, 2024 8:24 am