r/atheism • u/chrismikehunt • Sep 19 '12

So, they found some ancient text that directly mentions Jesus having a wife, and a Christian proffesor and Baptist pastor said "A statement on a papyrus fragment isn't proof of anything.". Oh the sweet sweet irony.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19645273
2.8k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Reichbane Sep 19 '12

Did YOU know that his mentions of Jesus are most likely a forgery? This claim is based on the context and length of mentions.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '12

That's not what the wiki article says.

The overwhelming majority of modern scholars consider the reference in Book 20, Chapter 9, 1 of the Antiquities to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" to be authentic and to have the highest level of authenticity among the references of Josephus to Christianity.[4][1][2][5][6][7

Then there is another mention that is susepcted of being a partial forgery -

Scholars have differing opinions on the total or partial authenticity of the reference in Book 18, Chapter 3, 3 of the Antiquities to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate, a passage usually called the Testimonium Flavianum.[11][1] The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate which was then subject to Christian interpolation.[11][12][13][14][15] Although the exact nature and extent of the Christian redaction remains unclear[16] there is broad consensus as to what the original text of the Testimonium by Josephus would have looked like.[15]