I judge positively the following claims and I would like to hear more along the same lines by Schmidt:
Where however I see that the approach is clearly apologetical in character is here:
If Josephus had said that Jesus was a "wise man" after the phrase translated so by Schmidt:
...then I could well understand that "wise man" is part and parcel of the Christian propaganda (and Josephus wanted merely to report it as such). Unfortunately for Schmidt, "wise man" appears in the first phrase of the Testimonium.
The qualification ‘if indeed it is appropriate to call him a man’ is similar to the way Josephus writes about other prophets and hence is not necessarily an indication that the author saw Jesus as divine in the sense Christian tradition did.
The assertion ‘He is the one who was Christ’ may be a way of identifying Jesus as ‘the so-called Christ’ rather than an expression of the author’s own belief.
As demonstrated by Schmidt, the seeming confession of the resurrection through the phrase ‘he had appeared to them on the third day, restored to life’ may be more appropriately translated as a more detached statement, ‘it seemed to them that he had been restored to life on the third day’ ( Schmidt 2018 ).
Where however I see that the approach is clearly apologetical in character is here:
His reference to Jesus as ‘a wise man’ likewise indicates that Josephus was influenced by the portrayal of Jesus as a wisdom teacher in some Christian texts. Elsewhere Josephus uses the phrase ‘a wise man’ to describe Solomon and Daniel, two of the Hebrew Bible’s most learned personages.
If Josephus had said that Jesus was a "wise man" after the phrase translated so by Schmidt:
‘it seemed to them that he had been restored to life on the third day’
...then I could well understand that "wise man" is part and parcel of the Christian propaganda (and Josephus wanted merely to report it as such). Unfortunately for Schmidt, "wise man" appears in the first phrase of the Testimonium.
Statistics: Posted by Giuseppe — Tue Jan 07, 2025 5:27 am