That is a fantastic find. I’ll look into it.

(It should also be noted that I wrote that sentence years ago. Several other scholars have published in agreement with us on this since. So I will revise that sentence to correspond with the present.)

Jesus is not likely to have ever quoted from or even have read the LXX. This is one of the reasons mainstream scholars have concluded he said very little of what is attributed to him in the Gospels. Those authors clearly were experts in literary Greek and used the LXX regularly, as it was more suited to a Greek reading / speaking audience (like Gentiles and Diaspora Jews).

As to when it was written, that’s a complicated question, because there are several versions, made in different centuries, and those versions underwent distortion in transmission just like the rest of the Bible. Wikipedia has an okay account. But in relation to Jesus, some version of the LXX began in the 3rd century BC and expanded to include the whole of what we call the Old Testament and Apocrypha before the 1st century AD. Other editions and versions were then formed in later centuries.

There are a number of non sequiturs there.

First, as you noted, the Hellenized Jewish Diaspora was always huge and generated most if not all of this literature. You can’t just say “this is Jewish, therefore it was written in Palestine.”

Second, after 70, Judea suffered a depopulation event; and again in the 130s after the Bar Kochba revolt. In both cases (but especially the first) Jews were killed en masse, sold into slavery en masse (often abroad, i.e., outside the Empire), and Gentiles moved in in considerable numbers, changing the entire face of the region. Jerusalem itself remained by law an uninhabited ruin from 70 to the 130s, and when it was rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina, Jews were banned from living there. Jewish attitudes and beliefs also substantially changed in result, even in Palestine. So you can’t equate the conditions post-War with those in the time of Jesus.

Third, “widely used” is a problematically vague term. We can expect Greek “was used” but almost entirely in pidgeon, non-elite mercantile Greek for trade relations with Gentiles and Diaspora Pilgrims. That is not the literary Greek we find in the NT (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount can only have been composed by the ancient equivalent of a PhD in Greek Literature, the highest educational achievement available: see my book on ancient education). That would be spoken/written only by the most elite of elite (that does not necessarily mean “rich,” but it does mean exceptional). It is not at all the same thing to say that Jesus could “get along” in mercantile Greek and to say that Jesus spent ten to fifteen years in Greek educational institutions mastering advanced Rhetoric.

Fourth, the Qumran texts in Greek might not have been composed there (they could be imports from the Diaspora). But they can only have been there if there were people educated enough to read them. Which we expect for a highly literary sect like that. Which gets to the question of what really was true about Jesus.

The Gospel Jesus can’t have been someone like that; he’s just some rando country bumpkin with no apparent education. But I do think one can fairly argue that that depiction of him is impossible, that in fact he had to be an educated Rabbi. But that only entails he attended a Rabbinical school (where Mishnah and Torah were taught, in Hebrew, a highbrow language compared to the common tongue, Aramaic, though they are close enough to “get buy” from one to the other). To double-study also in Greek would be extraordinary. Not impossible or unheard of (many elite Romans pursued a double-cost and double-time bilingual education in Latin and Greek, for example). But extraordinary simply translates to “improbable” unless you have specific evidence for his being one of those exceptions (as one might muster for Josephus, for example, a member of the highest ranks of the Jerusalem elite, and a member of the diplomatic class).

In general, whether and to what extent Jesus knew Greek is highly debated in the field, and to no resolution beyond that of “more likely, he didn’t,” which is not to be confused with “he absolutely didn’t.”

I had an exchange with G.Scott Gleaves (who as I mentioned in another comment argues in his book that Jesus was fluent in Koine Greek) who said that Josephus’ assistants received too much credit for the translation of his works into Greek and that this is evidence for the widespread use of Koine in the Holy Land. He also cited the Deuterocanonical works (additions to Esther, 2nd Maccabees, 2nd Esdras) as further support for Koine being widely used by Jews in Judea and Israel. I told him that none of those texts were composed in Galilee so citing them as support for his thesis that Jesus knew Greek fluently does not work. I know some of the DSS are in Greek but those were presumably composed at Qumran, nowhere near Nazareth or Galilee……

Indeed.

This or probably next month I will be publishing another blog illustrating this point further than ever before.

So keep your eye out.

On the CrossExamined page: never trust Christian apologetics. It is typically dishonest at best, incompetent at worst. There is a reason peer review exists: to weed out shady arguments like theirs. It isn’t always successful (some will slip through); but as a rule, if something of theirs hasn’t passed that filter, you have maximal reason to distrust it.

For more on that specific point here see my other comment.

I concur.

They will “explain away” (a) by saying maybe Josephus said something bad and Origen wanted to conceal it, but that’s not a plausible excuse, as were that the cause, Origen would be compelled to rebut it; he could not get away with simply ignoring it, particularly as he is explicitly looking for everything in Josephus about Jesus, and he knows his opponents will therefore be reading Josephus.

The issue at (b) is worse even, because the pared down version looks even less like Josephan discourse style. In short, we know how he writes about sects, because he does it several times, and is consistent; he follows none of that pattern here. We also know how he writes about messianic pretenders, because he does it several times, and is consistent; he follows none of that pattern here. We also know how he tells stories, because he does it countless times, and is consistent in numerous ways; he follows none of that pattern here. In short, it is impossible Josephus wrote this, even the pared down version.

Which is just hypothetical anyway; historicists don’t have real evidence, so they like to invent hypothetical evidence and treat it as real. They are unhappy with the facts, and so try to invent fake facts to sate their disappointment. They do this with Q, M, L, the Signs Source, and much else. This reliance on purely hypothetical evidence is an issue Lataster calls the field out for as methodologically unsound. But that he has to do that means the field is addicted to this kind of evidence.

Note it’s possible the forgeries were accomplished by Pamphilus, Eusebius’s tutor and predecessor at the library he found his manuscripts of Josephus at. But yes, it’s also possible Eusebius is the culprit. The stylistic evidence matches that theory, but that could also be explained by him picking up the style of his tutor.