Thanks again for the engagement, Greg. Just a few observations. One is about methodology. In your scenario, the true origins of the Jesus movement can be discovered by, as it were, decoding the Gospels, which are really telling us something about events that happened several decades later. Is this a reliable method? People will have to make up their own minds about that.
You say that the differences between the Gospel crucifixion account and the story in Vita are due to the fact that the Gospel account combines two versions of Josephus' story, which arose through hearsay. This obviously makes things much more complicated. It also makes it much harder to be sure that the story in Vita had any influence on the Gospel story.
And things become more complicated still. You are struck by the fact that the Passion account is based on the experiences of two people called Jesus - Jesus ben Sapphat and Jesus ben Ananias. But then it turns out that Jesus ben Ananias may actually be another version of Jesus ben Sapphat. It may be worthwhile to remind ourselves at this point that your claim about Jesus ben Sapphat has not been established.
My concern is about the speculative nature of this endeavour. There doesn't seem to be any way of anchoring this in reality.
Thanks again for the engagement, Greg. Just a few observations. One is about methodology. In your scenario, the true origins of the Jesus movement can be discovered by, as it were, decoding the Gospels, which are really telling us something about events that happened several decades later. Is this a reliable method? People will have to make up their own minds about that.
You say that the differences between the Gospel crucifixion account and the story in Vita are due to the fact that the Gospel account combines two versions of Josephus' story, which arose through hearsay. This obviously makes things much more complicated. It also makes it much harder to be sure that the story in Vita had any influence on the Gospel story.
And things become more complicated still. You are struck by the fact that the Passion account is based on the experiences of two people called Jesus - Jesus ben Sapphat and Jesus ben Ananias. But then it turns out that Jesus ben Ananias may actually be another version of Jesus ben Sapphat. It may be worthwhile to remind ourselves at this point that your claim about Jesus ben Sapphat has not been established.
My concern is about the speculative nature of this endeavour. There doesn't seem to be any way of anchoring this in reality.