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And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jsus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Mine-rve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

On Dr Browns side wrote:

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Sophiee,
the traditions about him (Jsus), the stories, narratives, and teachings were in existence before they came to be written. This was an oral culture, and the oral traditions were around while Jus lived, and they came to be written, based on the accounts of witnesses, only 20 years after his death (going by late dates). (snip)

This is incorrect.

There are no "eye witness" accounts in the GT and the earliest written papyri dates to around 125 CE -- 92 years after the supposed death of Jsus so certainly not from "eye witnesses"!

In 1897 a major hoard of papyrus fragments from the first-to-ninth c. CE was discovered at the site of ancient Oxyrhynchus (Egypt). Scholars number papyri in the order in which they were discovered. Fragments from two papyrus scrolls of the non-canonical gospel of Thomas (pOxy 644 & pOxy 655) are among the oldest known texts containing sayings ascribed to Jesus (ca. 200 CE). Most other surviving Chrstian papyri, including fragments of another copy of Thomas (pOxy 1), are from codices. Only 5 papyri of canonical gospels can be dated to the same era or earlier. These are:

• p52 -- a fragment of John 18 (written ca. 125 CE)
• p90 -- a fragment of John (ca 175 CE)
• p66 -- portions of John 1, 6, 15-16, 20-21 (ca. 200 CE)
• p64; p67 -- fragments of Matthew 3, 5, 26 (ca. 200 CE)
  
• 
  

Papyri containing more than one gospel date only after 200 CE. There are two mss. containing the texts of Luke & John, one of Matthew & John, and one of Mark & John. The oldest papyrus to present the four gospels in their current canonical order (p45) also comes from the 3rd c. Yet even this contains only fragments of Matt 20-26, Mark 4-12, Luke 6-13, John 10-18 & Acts 4-17.

[see http://religion.rutgers.edu/nt/primer/papyrus.html ]

B. Ehrman's book - The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the (Greek) Testament. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

"What do survive are copies of the copies some 5,366 of them in the Greek language alone, that date from the second century down to the sixteenth. Strikingly, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two of these copies are exactly alike in all their particulars. No one knows how many differences, or variant readings, occur among the surviving witnesses, but they must number in the hundreds of thousands." (page 27).

". . .there are some kinds of textual changes for which it is difficult to account apart from the deliberate activity of a transcriber. When a scribe appended an additional twelve verses to the end of the Gospel of mark, this can scarcely be attributed to mere oversight. . . (page 27-28).

On Dr Browns side wrote:

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You (Sophiee) are completely wrong in your assessment of Feldman and yet again seem to be confusing issues. He says that the Josephus mention about Jsus IS AUTHENTIC, and the quote you provided here explains that a SUBSTANTIAL amount of what Josephus wrote about Jsus is authentic. The parts about Jsus being messiah, and "if one should call him a man," are argued to be interpolations. But Feldman's conclusion is the testimonium IS AUTHENTIC and that it speaks of the Jsus of the New Testament, not some random Jsus. The pre-eminent Josephus scholar concludes exactly what I said, that Josephus speaks of the Jsus of the New Testament, TWICE in fact. He takes the James brother of Jesus as speaking of the brother of the Jsus of the New Testament. In both these cases, this leading Josephus scholar DOES NOT support what you are saying, but supports what I have said, that Josephus speaks of the Jesus of the New Testament.

"In a startling find, Shlomo Pines publishes citations of the TF (Josephus Testimonium Flavianum) appearing in Arabic and Syriac works of the 9th-10th century. These quotations substantially resemble our current Testimonium, but do not have two of the most suspicious phrases: "he was the Messiah" and "if indeed he can be called a man". Pines suggests these editions may have used an authentic, uninterpolated version of Josephus' work."

Feldman also wrote:

Josephus, the Bible and History" pages 430-437.

"The literature on Josephus' passage about Jsus, the Testimonium Flavianum, is enormous. For the period of 1937 - 1980 alone. . .I have listed 87 discussions, the overwhelming majority of which question its authenticity in whole or in part. . .

"Louis Prechac, "Reflexions sur le "Testimonium Flavianum". . .asks how an interpolator could have tampered with the passages in all copies of Josephus then circulating; but we may explain this by noting that our earliest manuscripts containing this part of the Antiquities dates from the 11^th century and indeed may be derived from such an interpolated manuscript.

"The case for interpolation has been most carefully stated by Eduard Norden, "Josephus and Tacitius uber Jsus Chrstus und eine messianische Propehtic," . . .the chief argument. . .are (1) that Origen in the third century, who certainly knew Book XVIII of Antiquities since he cites the passage about John, specifically (Contra Celsum 1.47 and Commentary on Matthew 10.17) states that Josephus disbelieved in Jsus as Chrst; and (2) the fact that the passage, despite its obvious usefulness in debates with Jews, is not found in any writer before Eusebius in the fourth century. If the passage had existed in Josephus' original text, we would have expected the passage to be cited by Justin Martyr in his dialog with the Jew Trypho, since it would have been an extremely effective in Trypho's charge that Chrstianity is based upon a rumor and that if Jsus was born and lived somewhere he is entirely unknown.

On this point I note that no fewer than eleven church fathers prior to or contemporary with Eusebius cite various passages from Josephus (including the Antiquities) but not the Testimonium. Moreover, it is a full century - and five other church leaders, most notably Augustine, who had many an occasion to find it useful - before we have another reference to the Testimonium in Jerone (De Viris Illustribus 13.14); and it seems remarkable that Jerome, who knows Josephus so well, cites him ninety times and admires him so much that he refers to him as a second Livy (Epistada and Eustochium 23), cites the Testimonium only once.

We may add that the fact that the passage in the War (of the Jews by Josephus) parallel to the one in the Antiquities about Pilate there is no mention of Jsus, despite the fact that the account of Pilate in the War is almost as full as the version in Antiquities, corroborates our suspicion that there was either no passage about Jsus in the original text of the Antiquities or that it had a different form.

We may also note that josephus' great contemporary and rival, Justis of Tiberias, apparently made no mention of Jsus (Photius, Bibliotheca 33). . .

"The most striking development on the subject of the Testimonium in recent years has been the publication of Shlomo Pines' An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its Implications (Jerusalem, 1971), which cites a text of the Testimonium by a tenth century Arab Chrstian named Agapius that omits Josephus' statement "if indeed we ought to call him a man," as well as the reference to Jsus' miracles and the role of Jewish leaders in accusing Jsus. It states that Jsus appeared to his disciples on the third day, but that his disciples reported this and, most significantly, that "he was perhaps the Messiah" rather than that he was the Messiah.

"Pines shows that Agapius' text is essentially based upon Eusebius' Historia Ecclesiastica and he suggests that it is an attempt at Chrstianization of the original version, which was unfavorable to Chrstians. . .

"A recent discussion of the passage by J. Neville Birdsall, "The Continuing Enigma of Josephus's Testimony about Jsus," concludes, on the basis of its vocabulary, that it is the work of a forger who knew the favorite phrases of Josephus but hwo used these phrases in senses that are not customary in the rest of Josephus' work. . .

"The passage about James (A. XX). . .has generally been accepted as authentic. Most recently, however, Tessa Rajak, Josephus: The Historian and His Society (London, 1983), p. 131, has argued the case for the whole account being a Chrstian interpolation is very strong, particularly because it sharply diverges from Josephus' view of Ananus the high priest in the War IV, 319-321, and because it so harshly criticizes the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin. We may comment, however, that Josephus is hardly averse to harsh criticism of the Sadduccees and even, to some extent of the Sanhedrin. . .Moreover, Origen (Commentary on Matthew 10.17) explicitly says that Josephus gave witness to so much righteousness in James, while expressing wonder that he did not admit Jsus to be the Messiah. . ."

But, ODBS, let's say that Feldman DID say that Josephus' writings were about the Jsus of Chrstianity (he doesn't) -- but what if he did? It is his OPINION and still does not constitute proof that Jsus ever existed, let alone that the person as portrayed in the Greek Text existed, let alone was a rabbi, a prophet (prophecy was dead), a messiah or a god! You would still have not proven a thing. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Will I get more posts saying I've answered nothing (5 or so posts with facts behind them) where all I get is anger and insistence in return? Time will tell.