A REPLY TO DR. THOMAS SCHMIDT'S CRITIQUE OF MY PAPER ON JOSEPHUS

In his new book, Dr. Thomas Schmidt replies to my article that was recently published in the Testimonium Flavianum.[1] In that article, I argued that all references to the Testimonium Flavianum ultimately derive in one form or another from Eusebius of Caesarea. Dr. Schmidt (S) has written a reply to me, and I want to firstly thank him for interacting with my essay at all.[2]

Pseudo-Hegesippus

A few preliminary remarks are necessary. Firstly, S does not present my article always charitably. For instance, when S claims, “Hansen omits that Pseudo-Hegesippus discusses John after Jesus, just like Josephus does, but not like Eusebius,” this claim is simply false. In fact, the order in which narratives appear in Pseudo-Hegesippus is something I address at length in my paper,[3] noting that the Paulina episode, which in Josephus’ works appears after Jesus and before John the Baptist in Antiquities, occurs prior to all of these in Pseudo-Hegesippus. Pseudo-Hegesippus has the following order:

Paulina > Samaritan repression > Jesus > John

Meanwhile, Josephus has:

Jesus > Paulina > Samaritan repression > John

This order is completely incompatible and the mere fact demonstrates quite clearly that no argument can be built based on the order in which narratives appear in Pseudo-Hegesippus, as the author felt absolutely free to mix and match wherever he wished. Using S’s logic, we should therefore conclude that Pseudo-Hegesippus is not reliant on Josephus’ Antiquities because almost everything is out of sequence. Logically if close sequence of narrated events indicates reliance, then discontinuity indicates nonreliance.

S likewise claims: “Hansen’s arguments that Pseudo-Hegesippus did not read Josephus closely are also insufficient insofar as the only evidence for this is that Pseudo-Hegesippus did not closely follow Josephus’ text.” This is also not true. I raised several other issues, pulling from several other scholars on this issue, specifically noting other problems that indicate Pseudo-Hegesippus did not read Antiquities very closely. For one, he almost never cites it in any location, and in fact only one single passage in the entire work is clearly based on Antiquities, which is the Paulina episode. This episode is also highly divergent. However, I also noted in a footnote other places, such as when recounting the Samaritan repression, Pseudo-Hegesippus gets the name of the mountain completely wrong, indicating he was not looking closely at the manuscript and instead summarizing from memory. The only way to demonstrate someone is looking at a text is to show reliable evidence he was doing so. S has not done so, and I have given several reasons to doubt this proposition.

As such, on multiple fronts we can see that S is not fully engaging with the strength of my work.

Turning to other issues, he regards my arguments in favor of Pseudo-Hegesippus using Eusebius to just be “vague parallels,” such as that Pseudo-Hegesippus uses the Jesus and John passages in direct proximity to each other, and that only Eusebius did so previously. Certainly, this is not the strongest point, but once again, S just omits all of my other argumentation. For instance, I point out that both Eusebius and Pseudo-Hegesippus alter the wording of Josephus to specifically aggrandize John in similar fashions.[4] I also point out that Pseudo-Hegesippus’ usage of Genesis 49:10 to frame his historical work is almost certainly taken from Eusebius, as Carson Bay has explained.[5] Additionally, he seems to be overtly reliant on Eusebius (and this is even admitted by the last critical edition of Pseudo-Hegesippus, I should add[6]) when talking about the martyrdom of the apostle Peter under Nero, which is almost certainly taken from Historia Ecclesiastica.

All of this makes it extremely unlikely that Pseudo-Hegesippus is independent of Eusebius, and that alone invalidates him as an independent witness to the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum. S did not address any of the rest of these arguments and relied entirely on repudiating only a partial bit of my work.

I am currently working on a book on the Testimonium Flavianum and details will be addressed even more there, but S also misses the work of Pollard on this front. Pollard notes in his discussion of De Excidio that, while Josephus’ account on the fall of Jerusalem is reduced, Eusebius’ expanded chronicle blames it on the Jews’ rejection and execution of Jesus. De Excidio runs with this, especially in the horrific scene of Maria eating her child (5.40).^[7] This is once again another specific episode that is probably being cribbed from Eusebius.

As for crediderunt in eum in Pseudo-Hegesippus, S already has provided a perfect explanation for why this occurred: Pseudo-Hegesippus felt no need follow his sources closely, and given he uses Josephus explicitly here (by name) as a way to reinforce the truthfulness of Christian tradition in an apologetic, he had every reason to also make Josephus seem less amenable to Christians to begin with. As such, S’s retorts on Pseudo-Hegesippus are uncompelling. Lastly, the phrase crediderunt in eum does not occur as an alternative to/or in sequence with “he was the Christ” in Pseudo-Hegesippus. To the contrary, Pseudo-Hegesippus just outright calls Jesus the Christ without any reservation while summarizing more of the TF (In quo Christi Iesu claruit aeterna potential, quod eum etiam principes synagogue quem ad mortem conprehenderant deum fatebantur). In short, Pseudo-Hegesippus is not actually evidence of an alternative reading of “he was believed to be the Christ” or similar. Instead the context is that many of the Judeans and Gentiles believed in him: Plerique tamen Iudaeorum, gentilium plurimi crediderunt in eum. This corresponds to Josephus’ statement that, “He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks,” not to the following statement “He was the Christ.” The phrase crediderunt in eum is a rewording of ἐπηγάγετο. As such, S’s retort is flawed on multiple grounds.

As a final note on Pseudo-Hegesippus, S incorrectly claims: “On the issue of dependency, Carson Bay’s recent and excellent study on Pseudo-Hegesippus lists the Antiquities as a direct source for Pseudo-Hegesippus, but Bay does not mention Eusebius as a source.” It is telling that S only cites pages 45-46 of Bay’s work, because Bay actually has an entire list of sources for Pseudo-Hegesippus’ work at the back of his book and talks in other portions of it, and what do we find but reliance on Eusebius listed multiple times, including right here in De Excidio 2.12:[8]

It is evident that S did not carefully examine all of Bay’s work here, and having spoken to Bay several times in personal correspondence over the last year, I know for a fact he is quite convinced that Pseudo-Hegesippus was reliant on Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica to inform his own historical work, and this is evident from Bay’s monograph as well. It should be noted Bay also provided citations for David DeVore’s recent paper (which DeVore notes himself) as evidence that De Excidio relied upon Eusebius.[9]

We should carefully note also the other sources specifically for De Excidio 2.12.2. While I did not note these in my paper, I will now. In Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica 1.11 he interweaves the gospel narratives with that of Josephus. This includes, of course, the statement that Herodias was responsible for the execution of John the Baptist. This is not from Josephus, but all of Eusebius’ words look very much like the similar summary of events given in Mark 6:17-18, the same source for De Excidio. Are we to believe that they coincidentally combine the same two quotations from Josephus, and the same interweaving from the gospels too?

I could point to other similarities as well. De Exicidio mirrors Eusebius’ same polemic and chastisement of Jews for not believing their own historian (cf. DE 2.12 and Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica 1.11.9). Eusebius says (and I thank Ken Olson for pointing out this parallel) that the destruction of Jerusalem was so “the judgment of God might overtake them at last for all their crimes against the Christ and his Apostles” (Historia Ecclesiastica 3.5.2) and Pseudo-Hegesippus writes, “They paid the penalties for their crimes, for after they had crucified Jesus the judge of divine matters, afterwards persecuted his disciples” (De Excidio 2.12). This is nearly identical and surely cannot be from sheer chance, especially not with the accumulation of all the other parallels noted above.

The evidence is quite clear, in my opinion, that Pseudo-Hegesippus is reliant on Eusebius, and this seems to be the general consensus among critical scholars on Pseudo-Hegesippus and those studying the reception history of Eusebius, including David DeVore, Agnès Molinier-Arbo, Carson Bay, Richard Pollard, and even the critical edition editor Vincenzo Ussani in his apparatus. S’s retorts do not highlight any compelling reason to consider De Excidio an independent source at all.

Jerome, and the Syriac Versions

S continues, “I note further that Jerome must be following the TF directly since his translation follows the Greek precisely, something that would be impossible if Jerome had instead followed the greatly exaggerated version of Pseudo-Hegesippus.” Of course, my argument was that Jerome was potentially only influenced by Pseudo-Hegesippus, and that he was not following him closely, which is obvious. I have no doubt he was mostly following Eusebius’ Greek closely. As such, this is not an actual retort to what I argued. Furthermore, my observation of the numerous linguistic overlaps between Jerome and Hegesippus have likewise been long noted by experts of Pseudo-Hegesippus’ work and are not mere curiosities.[10]

He continues arguing, “Jerome also must have had direct access to the Antiquities because his version contains the variant ‘he was believed to be the Christ’ which Eusebius does not have.” This is excessive and unnecessary. As we know from the Syriac tradition which was entirely reliant on Eusebius, and in S’s own book elsewhere he agrees with Whealey that Agapius and Michael the Syrian are most likely relying on Jacob of Edessa, and Jacob of Edessa, as we all very well know, was relying directly on Eusebius and probably on the well-known Syriac translation of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica which by all counts read “he was the Christ,” with no ambiguity. Of course, S argues that Jacob may have read Antiquities in Greek and also Eusebius. He does provide some reason to think this, including that Michael the Syrian has quotations derived from other passages in Josephus that are not in Eusebius. However, he neglects to note that we have evidence Jacob/Michael were looking directly at Eusebius when writing the Testimonium Flavianum, and the reason is that immediately after citing the Testimonium Flavianum, Michael cites the Abgar Correspondences from Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica. It is quite evident that they were looking directly at Eusebius in this portion of the text, not Josephus. S’s argument that this still might come from the Greek of Josephus directly because Michael/Jacob does not directly cite Eusebius and is quite often good about naming his citations (and even when he pulls a citation from a citation) is also undercut just by looking at a few other references in Michael the Syrian’s work which as S himself admits (p. 58) is probably taken from Jacob of Edessa, such as when he cites Phlegon as saying that the dead rose up and cursed the Jews at Christ’s death. Phlegon almost certainly said nothing of the sort, and this is clearly based on Christian interpretations of Phlegon’s words and this looks suspiciously like a summary of Eusebius’ words in his Chronicle wherein he quotes Phlegon, In short, here we have another reference which Michael is almost certainly taking from Eusebius, but which he does not cite as expressly coming from Eusebius, and in the exact same book just a little bit earlier. The Abgar letters provide another example. Despite him taking these from Eusebius (as just about all scholars unanimously agree to, including S), he does not cite Eusebius here. In short, Michael the Syrian/Jacob of Edessa not mentioning they took the Testimonium from Eusebius is not actually compelling evidence even remotely, as it is easily shown that they did not consistently cite their sources adequately, as was typical for all ancient and medieval historians. S’s argument is therefore unconvincing.

In fact, as S admits, four of the six testimonia which Jacob of Edessa used and which Michael the Syrian later uses (as does Agapius) are derived from Eusebius. Why, therefore, should we bother assuming that he used a Greek manuscript of Antiquities in making this compilation, when we already know he was using Eusebius directly? Well, it is because of a few wording differences. But those can be explained through other means, and so Occam’s Razor reigns supreme: why multiply sources unnecessarily? This seems to be the only way to salvage the Semitic language sources (Jacob, Michael, Agapius).

This means we have to probably find some other explanation for “he was thought to be the Messiah” in the Syriac tradition. The most immediate context and surrounding source is Eusebius. This likewise means we can similarly contend Jerome’s version is a fabrication as well.

S also omits in his response another key piece of evidence discounting the idea that Jerome is relying on Josephus, which is that when recounting the James passage he repeats the same fabrication which Eusebius does regarding James being the reason for the destruction of the Temple, which in turn was a misrepresentation originating in Origen (De Viris Illustribus 13). Likewise he writes that Josephus claimed John the Baptist was “truly a prophet,” but Josephus says no such thing. However, this does according to Historia Ecclesiastica 1.12.3 where Eusebius declares that Josephus thought he was a righteous man and that his words were in complete accordance with John’s depiction in the gospels. As such, two pieces of evidence that clearly show his reliance on Eusebius in this very passage. This means we have no reason to suspect Jerome was using an independent version of the TF. Once again, S’s argument relies on multiplying our assumptions beyond necessity.

Instead, my contention is that later Christian authors chose to downplay the language of the Testimonium Flavianum. S responds to this argument thusly:

Furthermore, if there really were Christian authors willing to diminish the Christian content of the TF, as Hansen claims, then why suspect that all witnesses to the TF have been subjected to Christian interpolation? Would not, as Hansen’s logic implies, at least some Christians have been averse to such interpolation?

To reply: No, this would not, because all versions of the TF originate from Eusebius, if I am correct. As such, there was only one version in circulation which they had to work from. S is mistaking my contention. If all versions of the TF originated in Eusebius, then there was no uninterpolated version in circulation to begin with, and no version which was not subjected to Christian intervention. There was only Eusebius’ version, which was then parsed down or altered subsequently after the fact. Thus, my logic is completely sound. If all versions originated from Eusebius, then this was the only version available to Christians who were averse to the language.

Isidore of Pelusium

S has some good retorts here on Isidore:

Hansen’s reasons for dismissing Isidore are only that Isidore quotes a work of Eusebius that does not contain the TF, and that Isidore was friends with John Chrysostom who quoted from Eusebius, but not from the TF. None of this is strong evidence that Isidore shows dependency on Eusebius’ version of the TF. Much more persuasive is that Isidore quotes material from the Antiquities not found in Eusebius or anywhere else, showing that Isidore knew the Antiquities directly.

I will fully acknowledge that my response on Isidore was underdeveloped in the finished article (an unfortunate consequence of the word limitations). However, in my upcoming book I will address more points in favor of this, and I will provide a quotation of it here:

Isidore of Pelusium (fifth century CE) also quotes the Testimonium Flavianum in an extant letter (PCC 78, 4.225^[11]). This version is, once again, the textus receptus version. Whealey claims that this is independent of Eusebius, because in other letters Isidore seems to use Josephus independently from Eusebius and does not show direct reliance on Eusebius elsewhere.^[12] This is not correct. Firstly, Isidore was a close associate of John Chrysostom; since Chrysostom frequently used Eusebius, Isidore almost certainly knew of Eusebius as well.^[13] Additionally, Isidore copied from Eusebius’ Quaestiones Ad Marinum in Ep. 2.212 (per Migne’s numbering). Thus, Isidore was certainly a reader of Eusebius’ works. Additionally, Whealey herself even wonders if Isidore’s text was tampered with, due to a few anomalies.^[14] This is made all the more difficult because Isidore does not quote any of the surrounding text, either. Had Isidore done this, we would know more clearly if his TF derived from a manuscript rather than from Eusebius.

Lastly, the argument that Isidore is independent because he cites some passages from Josephus independently of Eusebius is weak. As we have seen in the case of Jerome (and will see elsewhere), this does not indicate that the TF would be necessarily from the manuscript, since it was widely known that scribes borrowed from Eusebius. Given we already have evidence to suggest Isidore’s familiarity with Eusebius on multiple grounds, we can therefore dismiss any strength this argument might have had, pace Whealey.

In short, we have little reason to suspect that Isidore has any independence from Eusebius, and even if he did, the text could be mutilated (in which case, it seems imprudent to rely on it for information), or late enough to be derived from a manuscript from the Eusebian tradition (which is clearly evident from Isidore’s inclusion of ὁ Χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν). As such, until we can clearly show (a) Isidore’s independence, and (b) usage of a manuscript not derived from our current text family, we cannot hang any arguments on Isidore of Pelusium.

S himself contends in chapter 4 (unless I am misreading him) that ὁ Χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν is itself indicative of an interpolation, because it is not attested by the Syriac and Latin authors. As such, the very fact that Isidore uses ὁ Χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν automatically points toward a potential Eusebian origin by itself, or the usage of a tampered with manuscript that was made to cohere with Eusebius’ version. Or it means that Isidore’s text itself was tampered with and is thus unreliable as a witness. Either way, Isidore is therefore not an independent source until S can provide conclusive evidence that Isidore was independent. Instead, there are multiple ways to read Isidore as evidence in either direction.

Conclusion

I could continue because there are endless arguments against the rest of S’s claims as well, such as that the Old Russian Josephus was independent of Eusebius (there is no evidence of this, it was extremely reliant on Hamartolos and Malalas, including with passages surrounding its version of the Testimonium Flavianum; S does not address any of my arguments on this, and errantly calls this text “Slavonic”[15]), I have refuted in multiple publications the idea that Tacitus used Josephus as a source in Annals 15.44,[16] and Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus made heavy use of Eusebius, George Hamartolos, and others and also retains the ὁ Χριστὸς οὗτος ἦν reading, so this is almost assuredly not independent of the Eusebian tradition either.[17] Other arguments in his book are likewise quite suspect, such as his argument that Cassiodorus’ translators only cribbed from Eusebius because they did not like what was in the Greek text they were translating from. He writes:

Cassiodorus and his team copied only one other passage from Rufinus in their translation, a passage just thirty or so verses from the TF and which discusses the High Priests Ananus I and Caiaphas. Yet the translators chose not to copy many other passages in the same vicinity of the TF that can also be found in Rufinus’ version of Eusebius. What could be the cause of this? Alice Whealey suggests simple laziness on behalf of the translators, and this may well be true. But it is strange that a team of translators so expert and industrious as to plow through nearly three hundred thousand words in the Greek Antiquities—something even the renowned translator Jerome said he could not do—would somehow find that it saved them time to stop, locate another manuscript, and then thumb through it only to copy a few brief passages, all while simultaneously not copying other nearby Josephan passages. It is possible they would have done so, of course, but it is also possible that, when the translators were looking ahead to the latter books of the Antiquities in preparation for their translation, they did not exactly like what they saw in the Greek version of the TF, and so cast about for Rufinus’ friendlier version of it.

This argument is suspect for a multitude of reasons, the most significant of which is that his premise is simply wrong. He neglects also Historia Ecclesiastica 1.8.6–8 which is also replicated word for word in Latin Antiquities 17.168–170. There are in fact at least three passages, all from books 17 and 18, which are almost certainly cribbed from Rufinus. Once is happenstance. Twice might be coincidence. Three times is a pattern of behavior. We can quite easily see the reason for this cribbing as well: all three of them are from the first book of Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica (Historia Ecclesiastica 1.8.6-8 = LAJ 17.168–170; 1.10.4 = 18.34–35; 1.11.7–8 = 18.63–64). One of these translators evidently was a fan of Eusebius, had been reading his work, and excerpted these quotations from Josephus because they were convenient for their work. As for why these three were picked, it is because all three also directly related to Christ’s life in some capacity, and are used in that context, whereas the passage on John the Baptist was ancillary and also problematic because it took place far after the passage on Jesus. Notably, they do not bother copying anything after Jesus’ life word for word.

Regardless, it would do no real good (either for me or anyone else) to rebut every single thing in Dr. Schmidt’s book. In this case, I greatly appreciate Dr. Schmidt’s response and his contribution to this field (and I will be greatly engaging his volume in my own book), even if he did not address most of my consequential arguments for any of these positions. From reading the rest of his book I remain unconvinced by his hypothesis, but I also find it quite invigorating. I also want to recognize, as he did, that his appendix was in large part a last second revelation as he was not aware of my paper when initially drafting his book, so even though I believe my retorts are valid, I still want to make it clear Dr. Schmidt’s response was certainly meant as a fair interaction with my work, and I greatly appreciate that interaction, and hope for more in the future. This is unfortunately the nature of the Testimonium Flavianum debate. There is an endless mountain of literature, and not enough life on earth to respond to it all adequately. At present, I am fairly certain this debate will continue indefinitely. At the very least, I will be continuing it from the opposite side!

Footnotes:

[1] I am responding to his appendix which addresses my own paper: https://academic.oup.com/book/60034/chapter/513641314.

[2] My original paper which he is replying to is: “Reception of the Testimonium Flavianum: An Evaluation of the Independent Witnesses to Josephus’ Testimonium Flavianum,” New England Classical Journal 51, no. 2 (2024): 50–75.

[3] Hansen, “Reception of the Testimonium Flavianum,” 56–57.

[4] Hansen, “Reception of the Testimonium Flavianum,” 57.

[5] I also discuss this with citations to Bay and DeVore here, Hansen, “Reception of the Testimonium Flavianum,” 57–58.

[6] Vincenzo Ussani, Hegesippi Qui Dictur historiae Libri V (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 66; Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1932), 183.

[7] Richard Matthew Pollard, “The De Excidio of ‘Hegesippus’ and the Reception of Josephus in the Early Middle Ages,” Viator 46, no. 2 (2015): 65–100.

[8] See Carson Bay, Biblical Heroes and Classical Culture in Christian Late Antiquity: The Historiography, Exemplarity, and Anti-Judaism of Pseudo-Hegesippus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 35, 76–77, 175, 336–74.

[9] David J. DeVore, ‘On the Fourth-Century Reception of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History’, Church History 92, no. 3 (2023) 644–50, at 648.

[10] Pollard, “The De Excidio of ‘Hegesippus’,” 83. Even Whealey was forced to try and contend for the existence of a hitherto unattested intermediary to explain these overlaps, see Alice Whealey, “Josephus on Jesus: Evidence from the First Millenium,” Theologische Zeitschrift 51 (1995): 285–304, at 299. Occam’s Razor, however, prevails.

[11] Whealey, Josephus on Jesus, 50n68.

[12] Whealey, Josephus on Jesus, 37.

[13] Lillian I. Larsen, “The Letter Collection of Isidore of Pelusium,” in Late Antique Letter Collections: A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide, ed. Christiana Sogno, Bradley K. Storin, and Edward J. Watts (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 286–308; Manfred Kertsch, “Patristische Miszellen,” Vigiliae Christianae 42, no. 4 (1988): 395–400. See also Hansen, “The Reception of the Testimonium Flavianum,” 62.

[14] Whealey, Josephus on Jesus, 37.

[15] Solomon Zeitlin identified it as Old Russian (which the vast majority of scholars follow today), see Josephus on Jesus: With Particular Reference to the Slavonic Josephus and the Hebrew Josippon (Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1931), 60. Despite this, the “Slavonic” title has stuck. Horace G. Lunt and Moshe Taube, “Early East Slavic Translations from Hebrew?” Russian Linguistics 12 (1988): 147–87, at 169 identify it as Old Church Slavonic. Taube more recently calls it “East Slavic,” see Moshe Taube, The Cultural Legacy of the Pre-Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe (Oakland: University of California Press, 2023), 29.

[16] See “A Response to David Allen’s ‘A Model Reconstruction of What Josephus Would Have Realistically Written about Jesus’,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 19 (2023): 94–103 and “The Problem of Annals 15.44: On the Plinian Origin of Tacitus’ Information on Christians,” Journal of Early Christian History 13, no. 1 (2023): 62–80.

[17] John Duffy, “Hellenic Philosophy in Byzantium and the Lonely Mission of Michael Psellos,” in Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources, ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 139–56, at 142–43.