A certain Colin Green, sports enthusiast and author of How To Run A Football Club, maintains an amateur Christian apologetics blog called The Truth of Things. Where he wrote a tediously long attempt at rebutting my peer reviewed scholarship in the Journal of Early Christian Studies (or JECS) on the Josephan passage about James. A critique that the renowned liar and atheist Catholic apologist Tim O’Neill praises. So you might already guess it’s embarrassingly amateurish. In fact, it’s a perfect example of that to teach from.

Who?

Green claims to be “a qualified classicist and historian” but I could find no evidence of any graduate degrees or peer reviewed publications in either field (and his publisher’s own bio mentions nothing of the kind). On his blog he occasionally mentions having taken either a “Latin” or a “Classics” degree at some secular university; presumably undergraduate. So his standards for what counts as “qualified” seem fairly low.

What?

Called “A review of Richard Carrier’s journal article on Origen, Eusebius and Josephus,” it’s actually a ridiculous 21,000 word (!) amateur dissertation that gets nearly every pertinent thing wrong. Its thesis (charitably stated) is that Josephus must surely have written the three words “the so-called Christ” in the passage about a certain James illegally executed by the Sanhedrin, and thus really does refer to the brother of Jesus of the Gospels, and not (as I amass considerable evidence to prove) the other James that Josephus mentions in the same story, who was the brother of Jesus the son of Damneus, a person with no known no connection to Christianity. Green’s argument to that conclusion consists solely of complaining about my article.

I can forgive you for not having the patience to read 20,000 words on this from a hack apologist. But maybe you’d enjoy reading one from an actual published expert? So at a patron’s request, I shall here list all the ways Green’s bizarre rant goes off the rails of competence, logic, accuracy, and sometimes perhaps even honesty. As I go along, I’ll comment on why amateurs keep screwing up like this, instead of realizing they don’t know what they are talking about. So you’ll learn some cool stuff. But as always, you really need to read my actual article to get the full picture of what’s going wrong with Green. Don’t trust his account of it. Read it yourself.

I’ve made my article easier to access by republishing it in Hitler Homer Bible Christ (along with all my other peer reviewed journal articles on the historicity of Jesus, as well as a lot else). I provide a pagination concordance at the bottom of this blog entry below.

List of Errors

• (1) “Carrier intends to disqualify Origen (and, with him, Eusebius) as a textual witness to the six words in AJ 20″ (emphasis added).

Green screws up almost from his first sentence about me. My article does demonstrate Origen is not a textual witness to three of those words existing in Josephus. But it also clearly and repeatedly states I believe Eusebius did find these words in his copy of the AJ (meaning Josephus’s twenty volume treatise, Antiquities of the Jews), or else believed he was restoring the correct reading from a marginal note. See pp. 494, 502-03, 513, and 514 of my original article (e.g. in Hitler Homer Bible Christ).

I have elsewhere noted a likely candidate for the forgery of the longer Testimonium Flavianum (or TF) is Eusebius’s predecessor (and Origen’s successor) Pamphilus; he is thus a possible candidate for this emendation as well, though in JECS I rightly note it could have been anyone in that library in the sixty or so years between Origen and Eusebius. My article’s thesis is not that the adding of those three Christian words to this James passage (and possible replacing of two other words in the process) was an act of deliberate forgery, but an instance of a very common and widely documented error in textual transmission: mistaking a marginal note for a textual correction.

• (2) “I deduce that [Carrier] is suggesting Josephus originally wrote [“the brother of Jesus son of Damneus”] (see page 512). I cannot tell why the article does not set it out clearly, and why it is left to the reader to do.”

This is an extremely weird thing for Green to say. Because he even cites the page on which I do exactly that (a fact I even reference several times, on pp. 495 and 504). In fact, I devote an entire paragraph to this very point (spanning pp. 512-13), and even supply the likely Greek for it. So how can he know what page this is on, and at the same time claim it isn’t there? Your guess is as good as mine. But since what he says about my article here is 100% false, you can tell this already isn’t boding well.

It’s also possible Josephus didn’t think to write “son of Damneus” because he assumed the attribution would be obvious in so short a paragraph in which Jesus, not James, is the only person ever directly named at the beginning and end of the execution-and-aftermath story (pp. 503-04). Because Josephus does not say Ananus “executed James” but “executed the brother of Jesus,” referring to James only in an awkward side clause. Thus Josephus starts a paragraph with “executed the brother of Jesus,” and ends that same paragraph with Ananus being replaced by “Jesus ben Damneus” as punishment. Who the Jesus is that Josephus meant in the whole paragraph is thus already apparent—to anyone not intent on needing him to have said something else (and only a Christian would).

• (3) “I just wonder at the jarring shift of tone from earlier even-handed statements such as “Josephan authorship is not impossible” to assertively telling academia what to do [in the paper’s conclusion]”

Green is an amateur. He therefore doesn’t know that many journals have a mandatory editorial requirement of providing an “impact statement” laying out the significance and “impact” of your findings on the field. JECS is one such journal. The paper I submitted did not have the paragraph he is referring to. The journal’s editors specifically asked me to add it. So I did. And that’s the section at the end he is now referring to. They even asked that this explain how my conclusion should affect future research on the subject; so you’ll notice that’s exactly what I wrote. Experts are familiar with this. Amateurs act shocked.

Green is also an irrational Christian apologist. So he does not grasp the difference in modal discourse between a possibility and an empirical finding. There is no change in tone between my submitted article and the impact statement the editors asked me to add. The one is about what’s possible. The other is about what’s probable. The one is about a singular likelihood ratio (what the relative likelihood is between a Christian or Josephus composing such a clause, independent of all the evidence bearing on whether he did). The other is about the consequences of a full survey of all pertinent evidence, as has been accomplished in the paper by that point.

• (4) “[Carrier says] ‘We cannot use Origen as an attestation of a mention of Christ in AJ 20:200, and indeed, its absence in Origen’s text speaks against its authenticity.’ (emphasis added) What is absent in Origen’s text? I’m not sure what he means.”

Green is not very bright. Grammar, dude. Pronouns reference the last noun or noun clause. So. What’s missing? “A mention of Christ in AJ 20:200.” In other words, a quotation of AJ containing that material. There is none in Origen. As I’d just demonstrated. That Green can’t comprehend simple sentences in English bodes further ill here.

• (5) “[I]n regard to AJ 20:200…Carrier omits to even mention recent work that has led other scholars to affirm the opposite conclusion – against interpolation – in academic publications; the footnotes in his 2012 article make no mention of significant modern work … For example, no mention of W. Mizugaki, ‘Origen and Josephus’ … and Z. Baras, ‘The Testimonium Flavianum and the Martyrdom of James’ …”

Green credits O’Neill for this. Evincing his gullible trust in a crank. An expert would check if those two articles actually were relevant to the subject of my article before accusing me of ignoring them. An amateur just trusts a dishonest crank’s claim that they do.

In fact, neither the Baras nor the Mizugaki piece argue for the authenticity of the James passage. See my discussion of O’Neill’s dishonest claims that they do in More Asscrankery from Tim O’Neill. At most, Baras admits its possible inauthenticity and only mentions one common argument for its authenticity, without mounting any defense of that argument. An argument my paper already extensively addresses.

Hence as I originally wrote when O’Neill pulled this stunt on me (who, being an expert, didn’t fall for this, because I actually read the sources people cite), with emphasis now added:

Baras goes on to agree with me that Origen can only be confused. Josephus never said any such thing. Baras also mentions the theory that Origen confused Josephus and Hegesippus (the very theory I defend), and offers only one argument against it (that Origen would never make such a mistake), which I refute in my article with examples of Origen making exactly such mistakes—and with an extensive case showing he must have (so insisting he never could have is just circular argument).

And BTW, Baras makes no argument. He just states an assertion. And peer reviewers do not require us to cite undefended assertions. I had evidence backing my statements. Peer reviewers like it when you have evidence backing your statements.

This is another example of the consequences of amateurism: Green amateurishly thinks we are supposed to cite literally any and every paper gainsaying us (we aren’t; in fact that’s discouraged, as being pointless bibliography padding). In fact, as all experts know, we are only supposed to cite papers that argue against our position; not papers that make assertions without argument. As long as we address any given assertion against our thesis, we’re good. And I did. With evidence refuting it. As Baras is not the first to have asserted this, there was no need to “cite” him or anyone else who had. Because the matter is already discussed in the literature I do cite.

• (6) “Carrier does not justify why the specific term ‘Christian’ should be an object of discussion in treating James and the Jerusalem Jesus-movement [in Josephus].”

Here Green amateurishly confuses the word “Christian” with the identity being a Christian, i.e. being a member of a movement or sect, by whatever name, that Josephus would need to explain.

Of course, the Testimonium Flavianum does purport to call these people “Christians” and even says they were so-called owing to their founder’s designation as “the Christ” (although it never mentions anyone persecuting them). But if one agrees that’s fake, and Josephus never wrote that, then it’s possible he knew the Christian sect by some other moniker or description. That’s irrelevant to the point: Josephus would need to explain why James being the brother of a man called Christ had anything to do with his being not only illegally executed, but then his death avenged by the Jewish and Roman elite! As well as why this Jesus was even called a Christ, and what a Christ even was, or why his being so called, or his being mentioned at all, was even relevant to the story (despite the fact that Josephus always assiduously avoided the word Christ when describing other messiahs—one more reason we can doubt he did so here).

• (7) “It is cavalier to project onto Josephus that, if the passage were authentic, he ‘would certainly… at the very least have called James a ‘Christian’.”

A major sign of incompetence is changing what an author said and then complaining about it. Nowhere in my article do I say “Josephus would certainly at the very least have called James a Christian.” So Green has screwed up here. Big time. I said Josephus “would certainly [explain] why this Jesus was called ‘Christ’, what that word meant.” Notice that is an entirely different claim.

I then said Josephus would “at the very least [explain this name’s] connection to ‘Christians’ and James’s being one, if that is even what is meant—since James is not said to be a Christian here.” Notice what Green left out: exactly the qualification he tries to claim I didn’t make. I said if the mention of the word Christ was meant to communicate James’s membership in the Christian sect, then Josephus would have had to explain that. Which entails if that’s not what Josephus meant, he would still have to explain why we’re being told this about James at all; what the strange word “Christ” even means or what function it’s serving here. Indeed, to prove the point, I give many examples of Josephus doing this (explaining unusual words and the reasons for mentioning them)—indeed, even in this very same passage!

• (8) “On the question of [the Testimonium Flavianum] breaking the flow [of Josephus’s narrative of war-provoking calamities], Carrier does not mention the explanation known to scholars, that footnotes had not been invented in Josephus’ day, and therefore ancient texts are littered with breaks in the flow (whereas moderns avoid that problem with footnotes).”

I don’t know what peer reviewed scholar has made this “footnote” claim (Green cites no one). But they’d have to be remarkably incompetent to do so. A footnote is a commentary or digression on something just stated in the main text. The TF is neither. It’s wholly un-anchored to anything in the narrative. It has no apparent function there at all. It comments on nothing just said. It expands on nothing just said. It contributes nothing to that chapter’s narrative point or purpose.

That’s what we mean by the passage breaking the narrative flow. Josephus always explains his digressions (unless their function is obvious; but the TF can’t claim that); he links them to the story he is telling, or says why he is digressing from that story. To just insert an irrelevant vignette contrary to the entire thesis he is assembling stories to tell? Not what Josephus ever does. It’s in fact outright bizarre—for any ancient author (other than authors of Miscellanea, which Josephus never was).

Note that my article isn’t about the TF, though; I address it only cursorily (a fact that annoys Green). If you want a fuller argument regarding it, see On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 332-37.

• (9) “This is a remarkable leap. The figure ‘James ben Damneus’ is previously unknown to history. Such a personage is not found named in an ancient text, neither one by Josephus nor by anyone else. Why should the reader take the novel step of thinking that any such unattested person existed?”

This is an extremely bizarre thing to argue; but typical of amateurs, who don’t know how ancient historians worked or how the scarce survival of sources affects what we can expect to have today. Almost all the people Josephus mentions in the AJ are attested nowhere else: because he’s the only extant author for this material! Therefore, the probability we should expect someone else, somewhere else, to have mentioned these obscure figures in extant texts is effectively zero. So that argues nothing.

Josephus indeed only mentions Jesus ben Damneus because of the role he plays in the succession of high priests (we would never have heard of him otherwise); and Josephus never has any reason to mention his family at all, except once (just as he never mentions anyone else’s family without cause): to explain why this particular Jesus replaced Ananus. The reason he gives: that Ananus illegally executed his brother, generating general outrage, that led to Ananus being punished by giving Jesus his position. But for Ananus having done this to James and Jesus being thus compensated for it, we’d never have heard of this James. And indeed, that’s why James is only named as an afterthought; and why Jesus is in fact the actual primary subject of even the execution account—hence the way Josephus’s construction makes clear the only significance of mentioning James is whose brother he was. A fact that makes no sense otherwise (absent any further explanation; and no other is given). That’s precisely the reason we should doubt the authenticity of the added “Christ” comment.

• (10) “Notably, this argument that ‘so the scribe believed – the Jesus here mentioned is Jesus Christ’ does not work if ‘called Christ’ is supposed to have been written above ‘Jesus ben Damneus’. There is no historical basis for anyone believing that Jesus Christ was also known as ‘Jesus ben Damneus’.

This is another weird one. Green had just mentioned the whole page of my article where I explained the very common phenomenon of dittograph correction in textual transmission, and how it would cause the replacement of one phrase with another, and why. Green must not have understood any of it. Which is typical of an amateur. An expert would have immediately understood what I was talking about; indeed, they’d likely have encountered many examples in paleography themselves (depending on their experience with manuscripts and textual criticism):

When scribes saw words scribbled above a line, it was often thought by those scribes that the words above were intended to replace the words below: that this was an error the previous scribe is signaling a correction of. Because they didn’t have erasers; scraping ink off was possible but arduous and not the common recourse that we see—and no, they did not typically “cross out” the erroneous material either, as later Green amateurishly assumes (and I never mention any such thing). So when the next scribe produces a copy, they complete the correction: they replace the words below with what they believe was the “correction” above. And this is even more likely when there was an evident dittograph possible, as is the case here.

As I wrote in my article (on p. 512; which Green apparently skipped or didn’t comprehend):

This is a common scribal error where a copyist’s eye slips to a similar line a few lines down (by mistaking which “Jesus” he had left off at), then realizes he had picked up at the wrong place, but corrected himself and then wrote a superlinear phrase intended to replace the erroneous material. A later copyist would then interpret the earlier copyist’s correction as calling for the erasure of “ben Damneus” as a dittograph, omit the words, and replace it with the gloss, “who was called Christ.” This was a frequent occurrence in manuscript transmission, resulting from scribes correcting a perceived error, but in the process, implanting their own error into the text.

In other words, when a scribe who wrote “Jesus,” looked away (such as to ink his quill or rest or attend to business), and looked back and started transcribing at the wrong “Jesus,” they would have written “the son of Damneus.” But then, catching their mistake, they would go back to where they left off and start transcribing the correct line; and above the mistaken dittograph (the erroneous “duplication” of “the son of Damneus” after the wrong “Jesus”), they would write what is supposed to replace it. This happened a lot in ancient manuscript transmission. We have gobs of examples. And scribes readily understood this (that’s why they indicated these corrections), and thus the next scribe would typically complete the correction come time to make a copy of the text. This means that many scribes did this by accident—mistaking a scholarly note above a line as such a correction—and we have gobs of examples of that happening, too.

This is what I explain in my article: a very likely sequence of events (because we see this kind of thing happening all over the place in ancient manuscripts) is that a scribe in the late 3rd century producing a copy (the copy Eusebius would be using decades later) saw “the so-called Christ” written above “Jesus the son of Damneus,” saw the other “Jesus the son of Damneus” a few lines down, went “Aha! I see what the last scribe did here,” and understood this as a signal that the first “Jesus the son of Damneus” was a dittographic error and that it needed to be corrected with the indicated material, hence leaving out what would be the erroneous text (“the son of Damneus”) and replacing it with what is now believed to be the correct text (“the so-called Christ”). Indeed a Christian scribe would be even more likely to do this than usual, as they’d be excited to know the passage “really” refers to their Lord, whom they already associate with a James.

At no point does this require that “Jesus Christ was known as Jesus ben Damneus” to anyone; and nowhere in my article do I ever argue anything even implying that. Green is just such a rank amateur he doesn’t understand what my article does say. But experts do. That’s why it passed peer review.

• (11) “How does Carrier know, for example, that some unknown scribe in the 3^rd century would write ‘exactly [this] kind of thing’ … when faced with the passage ‘the brother of Jesus, who was called James’?”

Gosh. I wonder if I wrote an article that answers that question? Oh right. I did. In the very article Green is talking about, I wrote nearly five whole pages on the answer to this question (pp. 495-97 and 511-12). Is Green this big of a doofus? I can’t otherwise explain how he goofed this one. At any rate, go read my paper if you want to know what my answer is and what the evidence is for it. And toast to Green’s failure to do that.

• (12) “This argument for how the extant text in Josephus accrued an interpolation is speculative, not based on manuscript evidence.”

Only an amateur says things like this. Experts know a sizable amount of textual criticism argues from data without manuscript evidence. There are tons of examples in the expert literature. We have to. Precisely because most manuscript evidence has been lost (as I even prove has happened in this case: pp. 492-94). So most errors like this are only detectable through circumstantial evidence. Just like I literally fill my whole paper with. Which means my conclusion is not speculative. It is empirically proved with evidence. All experts agree this evidence does not have to include lost manuscripts, and know it often won’t. That’s why peer reviewers approved my paper.

• (13) “[T]he fact that Carrier does not turn his thoughts to any range of alternative permutations is frustrating. Could not other permutations be ‘exactly the kind of thing’ a scribe would write?”

This is another boner amateur mistake.

It doesn’t matter what else “could have” been written; because Josephus could also have written different things. So the many alternative permutations one can imagine are all equally likely on either hypothesis. These possibilities therefore cancel out, having no effect on the likelihood that this evidence arose by either hand. That’s why peer reviewers don’t require textual critics to discuss such things; and thus why they didn’t require me to.

If there is evidence for a differential likelihood, we are expected to discuss that. And thus I do: I devoted several pages in my article arguing that this phrase is definitely as or even more likely to have come from a Christian hand than Josephus; indeed, it is a direct lift from Scripture! (pp. 496-97 and 511) Who is more likely to do that? Josephus? Or a Christian scribe?

Starting to get a picture now of why my stuff passes peer review and Green’s doesn’t?

• (14) “Carrier’s concession that Josephus’ readership already had meaningful knowledge of Christians is exceedingly damaging to Carrier’s argument that ‘the reference [to Christ] is so obscure’.”

Another amateur remark.

Pliny the Younger, the most legally informed Roman of his time, didn’t even know why Christians were called Christians or what a Christ was until he interrogated them (see On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 342-43; with Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 418-22). Green is confusing knowledge that Christians were criminals who get executed, with knowledge of why they were called Christians, what a Christ was, or where they came from or why they are prosecuted (not least by Ananus, and that despite numerous leading Jews and Romans opposing his doing so). Pliny literally had to write the emperor to ask why they were even supposed to be prosecuted at all!

We see an example of this in Tacitus—if you believe his passage about Christians is authentic. And even if you don’t, it’s then a passage about another widely hated Jewish sect (see my chapter on Tacitus in Hitler Homer Bible Christ). And yet despite being widely hated, Tacitus felt the need to explain to his readers why. Even if he is vague on that, Josephus isn’t even vague. He gives no explanation whatsoever. Which in my paper I demonstrate with examples is really weird of him.

• (15) “[Tacitus explains] the word ‘Chrestians’, not the word ‘Christ’ which Tacitus leaves unexplained.”

Because Tacitus didn’t know. Precisely demonstrating my point above. Though assuming, again, Tacitus even wrote that. I’m fairly sure he didn’t. But in the context of Green’s own argument, which requires the premise that he did write that, Tacitus says Christ was the name of their founder—in other words, he does explain the word: it’s the movement’s founder’s name. Which is false. A fact Josephus would know, being a Jew well versed in the Scriptural meaning of “Christ” as anointed and hence messiah. But that Tacitus didn’t know any of that, is not an argument that Josephus wouldn’t explain it to the likes of him. He absolutely would. As he did all other Jewish concepts and sects he mentions.

Note the author of the TF did the same thing Tacitus appears to do: he explains “Christian” as deriving from the founder’s title of Christ, and only knows, unlike Tacitus, it’s his title and not his name; Tacitus doesn’t even seem to know his name was Jesus! Neither does Pliny.

You might see by now how Green’s amateurism limits his ability to reason correctly about the evidence: he doesn’t know basic, crucial background information, doesn’t correctly describe evidence, and doesn’t draw valid inferences from it the way an expert would.

• (16) “[W]hy should the same readers who could supposedly infer that “Jesus” refers to “Jesus ben Damneus” be unable to infer a reason for the presence of “Christ” in the text?”

Because “Jesus ben Damneus” is already narratively explained in the text; “Christ” is not. Inferences require something present to infer from. There is nothing for the word “Christ” here to infer from, not even as to why it’s relevant or even important for Josephus to mention, much less what it means. There is for the idea that it’s Jesus ben Damneus whose brother is being murdered here because it’s the very same Jesus compensated for it. Green doesn’t even understand how inference works.

• (17) “A moniker for each Jesus is necessary so that the passage facilitates its reference to both Jesuses without confusing them…. [So] one of them is identified as ‘Jesus ben Damneus’ and the other is identified as ‘Jesus called Christ’.”

This is funny. Because here Green just admitted Josephus’s readers would have “confused” them: meaning, they would have understood they were the same Jesus! Precisely my point he tried denying earlier. Consistency is also not a virtue common in the amateur.

But also, his point now doesn’t address anything I argue, illustrating how Green can’t even comprehend what my article actually says. Of course, I assume (?) Green knows “Jesus ben Damneus” isn’t in the text. “Jesus ben Damneus” is simply the Hebraic representation in English of the actual Greek which renders most literally in English as “Jesus the son of Damneus.” This is not the same as “so-called Christ,” which is not a patronymic. Josephus’s Gentile readers certainly understood patronymics. Josephus uses them routinely without explanation. But his readers would have no idea why Josephus isn’t giving one for Jesus, but instead giving them some weird ambiguous designator, a word that isn’t even being explained, nor why it matters. Josephus never elsewhere does this. Nor would he. It’s inexplicable.

This is not answered by saying “Josephus just needed to distinguish the two Jesuses.” The problem is that this isn’t how Josephus would do that—because it’s unprecedented in Josephus (at least to do it in this particular way) and makes the text even more inexplicable and confusing. Why are we not being given their patronymic? Why is Jesus more important than James who only gets named incidentally? Why is Jesus called a Christ? What is a Christ? Why are we being told he was called that? Why is James being killed? Why are we being told about his brother even though his brother apparently isn’t even involved? What does this Jesus have to do with any of this? Why are we being told this story at all?

And those are just some of the problems I list in my article: contrary to Green’s claim that the “he just needed to tell them apart” explanation “goes unmentioned by Carrier,” a considerable amount of my paper is specifically devoted to addressing that explanation. That’s what all the “this is a weird way to do that” stuff is about.

So here we have Green not even comprehending the arguments in my paper, and raising objections already thoroughly refuted in it. And contradicting himself. All common hack moves.

• (18) “By [Carrier’s] own argument, the abuse of legal process was sufficient to warrant outrage and action.”

Green evidently did not read the account as Josephus wrote it. Josephus says James was only executed because Ananus was a Sadducee and Sadducees are overly strict with the law, so Ananus took an opportunity to enforce that strictness when he couldn’t be stopped. This means (a) Ananus was not allowed to kill people like James any other time (hence he had to “seize an opportunity” to do so) and (b) most Jews (not being Sadducees) did not believe James should have been killed—including Josephus himself, who distances himself from such viciously “strict” law enforcement by blaming it on the cruel Sadducees.

This is why the actual crime James was accused of isn’t even important enough to Josephus to mention: he considers it enough to tell his Gentile readers executing James was an excessive application of Jewish laws neither he nor most Jews would endorse anyway; and that that’s why Ananus could only get away with it when he thought no one could stop him; and this overstep of power generated the outrage that deposed him. Josephus even makes clear the Roman governor could have approved the assembly of the Sanhedrin to execute James—and Ananus would not have been removed if he did. Thus Josephus is telling his Gentile readers that even the Roman Albinus did not approve the execution of James.

That is simply inexplicable if this had anything to do with Christianity. Which doesn’t even make it likely it did (and thus Josephus never imagined it did, and thus never connected any of it to “Christ”). But even if contrary to all expectation it somehow still did, this would be so bizarre to the ears of Josephus’s readers he would absolutely need to explain it. So that he doesn’t is evidence he never connected any of this to a “Christ.”

It is typical of amateurs not to read the sources they are discussing, and to not correctly interpret what they are saying and its significance.

• (19) “He offers no explanation for why he thinks it was illegal to be in the ‘Christian sect’ in 60s Jerusalem.”

This is funny coming from a Christian apologist. But I’ll set that aside. “60s Jerusalem” was in a Roman province. Unless Green is also going to agree that Tacitus didn’t write what he did about Christians in the 60s being a hated criminal sect, and that Christians were never persecuted criminally by Roman authoritis until (for some reason) the second century, when Pliny knew they were as a matter of course (though not why), it’s hard to explain why Green would think Christianity was legally protected at the time.

But the important context is not the 60s. It’s the 90s. When Josephus is writing this. It’s the Gentiles of the 90s Josephus would need to explain this to. If Christianity was a legal association in the 60s but no longer by the 90s, that’s certainly a historical curiosity he would need to explain! And merely “presuming” that the state of affairs Pliny considers a matter of course had not existed just fifteen years earlier is to invent facts not in evidence. Why was their Imperial license to assemble revoked? How did we never hear of such a strange turn of events as the Emperor licensing the Christian sect even; much less the remarkable incident of that license then being revoked? If such a thing had happened so recently, why does neither Pliny nor even the Emperor Trajan know of it? Both of whom were holding imperial legal offices in the 90s.

This is another example of the danger of amateurism: Green does not seem to understand why Christianity was ever deemed illegal; and he seems ready to invent histoirical facts for which we have no evidence. We know from Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan that Christians were only being prosecuted for illegal assembly; and we know from that and other evidence that groups needed a license from the imperial government to assemble. The Jews had such a license (indeed at that time even by treaty). But we know from Paul certain factions of Jewish leadership considered Christians to be practicing illegally well into the 50s. So if Christians couldn’t assemble with Jews in service to the Jewish synagogue authorities, and they didn’t get specific legal recognition as a religious association by the imperial authorities, they were by definition a criminal organization under Roman law. Yet the Christians receiving an imperial license to assemble, or being welcome servants to Jewish synagogue authorities, are facts too extraordinary to just imagine true without any evidence of it.

Like all Christian apologists, Green needs to imagine wildly implausible things not in evidence, just to escape the consequences of the only facts that are in evidence.

• (20) “[Carrier asks] “Why is ‘Jesus’ the primary subject in the execution of James, rather than James, the one actually executed?” This is a circular argument. [Because] only Carrier’s rewriting of the passage makes Jesus the central subject.”

Green goofs again here. Surprisingly for a self-proclaimed Classicist. He didn’t look at the Greek syntax. I am not the one who centers Jesus in the story. The Greek sentence structure Josephus chose to construct does—Josephus centers Jesus. Oddly. Just as I point out in my article: Josephus does not say “Ananus executed James, the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ,” Josephus oddly chose to say “Ananus executed the brother of Jesus, for whom the name was James.” It does not matter whether “the so-called Christ” or “the son of Damneus” is inserted here: it remains the fact that Jesus is the primary named; James is only named as an afterthought. In other words, the important person, Josephus is telling us here, is Jesus. James is incidental. Why?

Someone who had a Ph.D. in Classics would have gotten this. Which is why we can’t claim merely having a bachelor’s degree is sufficient to make you an expert. But it’s all the weirder that Green screwed this up, given that I devoted several sentences before the one he quotes explaining this syntactical fact (see p. 504).

• (21) “[It] seems to me to be assuming too many things … [like] why should Luke have no source other than Josephus? How does this prove that Luke did not know of the death of James? Why assume that the story of James’ death would fit Luke’s narrative scheme in Acts?”

None of these are assumed. All of them are argued for and defended with evidence in my article (directly or by citation of the demonstrations elsewhere). So Green cannot even tell the difference between an assumption and an argued conclusion. (He also doesn’t seem aware that this James exists nowhere in Acts. Luke does not even appear to know he existed. Much less was executed yet vindicated by the authorities.)

Of course I never say Luke had “no source other than Josephus”; I argue, citing abundant scholarship proving the fact, that Luke used Josephus as one of his sources, the AJ in particular. Therefore he would have known this story, had it then existed in the AJ. And I never say “that Luke did not know of the death of James”; I say Luke did not know the specific account of it in the AJ (and therefore it can’t have been in the AJ at that time). And the evidence for that conclusion is precisely the very reasons Luke would have had to use it had he known of it, which I do not “assume,” but demonstrate with argument and citations of supporting scholarship (pp. 505-06). All of which Green ignores. Like an amateur.

• (22) “Carrier unexpectedly calls James (the brother of Christ) ‘an unknown James’. He does not here explain how he arrives at the idea of James being ‘unknown’ as a person.”

This is another super weird goof. Directly refuting his false claim here, I in fact provided half a page of explanation! See the first half of p. 499. Maybe you can explain to me how Green missed this entire paragraph? Or how he doesn’t get why a James never introduced elsewhere and whose significance is never explained would be “unknown” relative to the actual, quite famous and well-described person whose death Josephus actually credits the fall of Jerusalem to? Perhaps Green is confusing people a Christian would know, with people Josephus’s Roman audience would know—which would be funny, because that’s evidence I cite that Josephus can’t have connected this James to “Christ.” Only Christians would not require an explanation of this James’s significance. Which is how we know only Christians can have produced this passage as we have it.

As I wrote:

Josephus actually says the fall of Jerusalem was a punishment for (and natural consequence of) the execution of Ananus the Younger (the very Ananus who executed this James in AJ 20.200). He explains in detail that Jerusalem was defiled by the killing of a former Temple high priest and the sacrilegious discarding of his body, and that this defilement brought God’s final wrath upon the city. The Jews had also doomed themselves, he says, by killing the one man eloquent enough to persuade both sides toward an amicable peace (Jewish War 4.314–25) … Josephus, then, could hardly have contradicted himself elsewhere by (inexplicably) laying responsibility on the execution of an unknown James. That would make no narrative sense. No James is significant enough in any of Josephus’s accounts to explain how his death could have caused the fall of Jerusalem.

So. Tell me. Is Green just not very bright? Or did he just rage-skim my article and not actually read it?

• (23) “It is well known that Josephus tells the tale of a certain James’ death, set in the 60s. Origen does not: he merely mentions that he was killed.”

That’s not true. Origen does a lot more than “merely mention that [James] was killed.” That’s how we know Origen is confusing the account of Hegesippus as coming from Josephus. As I explain in my article (pp. 507-10), Origen says his source (whom he claims is Josephus) narrated an account of James “the Just,” that that narrative said he was so-called on account of the people thinking highly of him, and that this source linked his stoning to the fall of Jerusalem (causally and we must therefore infer temporally). All these details are peculiar to Hegesippus’s narrative of the death of James. None come from Josephus (nor are even plausibly Josephan). So again here we see Green ignoring facts to construct a false claim in rebuttal to my article, that ignores the entire argument of my article. That’s an amateur.

• (24) “[T]hese innocent words ‘the same writer’ are capable of other interpretations, [such as] just a way to avoid repeating ‘Josephus… Josephus…’ [so] these few words are not strong enough to bear the weight of Carrier’s assumptions and his bold conclusion that “Origen must have had an entirely different treatise in mind.”

At no point in my article do I say “Origen must have had an entirely different treatise in mind” because he said “the same writer.” Green has fabricated an argument I never made, and duly knocks down his straw man. There are several lessons here in how to spot incompetence:

Origen said a number of things that in conjunction lead to this conclusion; that one element alone would not be telltale, nor do I argue from it this way. Amateurs (and Christian apologists generally) have a really hard time grasping that a conjunction of several elements that individually are mundane can be itself no longer mundane. The conclusion follows from the conjunction, not the elements individually. Amateurs also tend to not understand what an argument even is, and thus, like here, Green mistakes my argument as “because x, therefore y” merely because I mention x. In fact my argument isn’t even from x. Green confuses the fact that I merely mention a thing, as my using it as a premise. But no competent diagram of my argument could conclude this.

Here is the actual argument Green is incompetently quoting from (from p. 499, emphasis now added):

[C]ontrary to previous assumptions, Origen does not say that Josephus said this in the AJ. He refers to a passage in Josephus attesting John the Baptist in AJ 18 (and, notably, not a passage that attests to Jesus in that same book, one of the many instances in which we must conclude Origen cannot have known the TF, which now also appears in AJ 18), and only then says, ‘the same writer says’ this thing about James the Just. Notably, he does not say Josephus says it in the same book, or even in the same work. Origen must have had an entirely different treatise in mind.

Notice that the argument here is that “Origen must have had an entirely different treatise in mind” not because he “only then says, ‘the same writer says’ this,” but because “he does not say Josephus says it in the same book, or even in the same work.” In other words, the conjunction of elements in his construction show that Origen does not know where in any of Josephus’s works he said this. Because when he knows, he tells us. And here, he conspicuously does not tell us. Indeed, he does this twice in a completely different way (see my parallel argument on p. 501), thus confirming the conclusion. I then verify this conclusion with all the evidence that what Origen says Josephus said is not anywhere in the works of Josephus but in fact contradicted by the works of Josephus (pp. 499-501)—but it is peculiarly all in Hegesippus (pp. 507-10).

A competent person would have diagrammed and thus understood my actual argument. Green is not a competent person.

• (25) “[Carrier says] ‘Origen did not note the phrase, ‘who was called Christ,’ as original to Josephus.’ In other words, it is not Origen but other scholars (after Origen) who thought this phrase was original to Josephus. But Carrier’s statement is problematic. In particular, the words ‘who was called Christ’ account for only three of the six Greek words that constitute, in full, ‘the brother of Jesus who was called Christ’.”

Here Green commits the same error. He mistakes my argument as being “Origen only said those three words but never attributed them to Josephus,” and thus rebuts that argument I never made with “Origen said six words that are from Josephus, not three.” But that’s not my argument. Here is my actual argument (p. 498):

Origen did not note the phrase, “who was called Christ,” as original to Josephus, or claim that he was even quoting Josephus at all. It is only with Eusebius’s quotation of Origen that this presumption is made. And therein lies an important clue…

In other words, my argument is that Origen does not say any of the words he says come from Josephus—not the six Green is talking about, or any others. Origen is not quoting Josephus. Origen is writing his own sentences, his own paraphrase. These are the words of Origen. One cannot answer that argument with “but he said six words!” He still doesn’t say those words come from Josephus.

And here is where we really see Green’s amateurism:

An expert would already know that Origen is already talking about James the brother of Jesus, so we already know why he would say the phrase “James the brother of Jesus.” So that these three words would match in both texts would never be attributable to quotation. Otherwise we’d have to say every writer in all of history who says “James the brother of Jesus” is quoting each other. No. That’s just people using words as language requires. The only way to argue that maybe Origen is quoting Josephus is by claiming the addition of “who was called Christ” is telltale. But Origen does not say those words come from Josephus either. And as I go on to show, we would already expect Origen to use those words anyway. They appear to be Origen’s words. And indeed those three words only “appear” in Josephus after Origen; in time for Eusebius to find them there (when peculiarly Origen had not), and then present them as a quotation of Josephus (in exactly the way Origen didn’t).

This is why only those three words are relevant to our inquiry. That Green does not understand this is illustrative of his incompetence in literary and linguistic analysis and text-critical reasoning.

• (26) “[Carrier says] Hegesippus writes ‘as if originating the appellation’? That seems an ill-informed thing for Carrier to write. Although Carrier does not tell the reader, we know that the Gospel of Thomas also uses the appellation ‘James the Just’. And we know that many scholars date Thomas earlier than Hegesippus. … [and Origen knew GThom, so] the suggestion that Hegesippus is the originator of this phrase is not well made. What’s more, according to Eusebius, the appellation ‘James the Just’ was also used by Origen’s teacher Clement of Alexandria.”

We get a bunch of boners here. Hegesippus predates Clement of Alexandria. So that Clement used a phrase Hegesippus invented is not an argument against Hegesippus inventing it. And the Gospel of Thomas is not quoted or cited by any author before the 3rd century, so we cannot in fact establish the text we have of it dates earlier—and remember, just because our Medieval Coptic copy says certain things, does not mean those things were in the text of it centuries earlier; in fact we know they often weren’t: early Greek papyrus fragments show significant differences from the Coptic text Green is referring to. Scholars do imagine the original could date anywhere from 100 to 200 A.D. But that it was written in the 2nd century and that that is what it then said are both speculations based on no evidence.

In On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 326-31) I suggest Hegesippus is actually quoting or adapting this story from a lost Acts of James, which could well date earlier that century. But I don’t bother with that speculation in the article Green is addressing. Because I don’t actually claim Hegesippus invented the appellation in that article; I only suggest it looks like this story originated it (hence the “as if” Hegesippus did). And I list evidence in support of that conclusion: the designation is derived in this narrative from the claim that Isaiah predicted the events in this story; and James is merely called “just” many times before one of his murderers sticks the term to his name ironically near the end of the tale—in other words, he is not introduced as “James the Just”; he is depicted as getting the name from this story.

The significance of this is that this story (wherever it originated) appears to be where the appellation came from. Thus that Origen cites numerous peculiarities of this very story (and only mistakenly attributes them to Josephus) is reinforced here as the very thing he is doing. This is not the same thing as arguing this is where Origen got the phrase. Amateurs have a hard time with probability reasoning. Saying that an item of evidence increases the probability of a conclusion is not saying that that conclusion is the only possible explanation of the evidence—it isn’t even saying that that conclusion is the most likely explanation of the evidence. The latter conclusion comes only after an accumulation of all the evidence together. Not from individual isolated items of evidence.

• (27) “‘Vespasian besieged them’ (Hegesippus) and ‘Jerusalem’s destruction’ (Origen) are at opposite ends of the story of the war, years apart. … [So w]hy does Carrier make such an inaccurate statement as ‘according to Hegesippus, James’ execution… immediately precedes Jerusalem’s destruction’?”

This is not an error. Origen and Hegesippus both say the execution of James came years before the actual destruction. So that the ensuing destruction took a few years is not at all relevant to the immediacy of the consequence. And Origen and Hegesippus both say the destruction of Jerusalem was the inevitable consequence of the siege. There is no reason whatever for Hegesippus to conclude his story with the cause of the destruction “immediately” following the murder of James but to signal that was the punishment for it, as I show Eusebius correctly infers from this very passage. And indeed, Hegesippus’s narrative explicitly sets this up by noting Isaiah had predicted that, for this murder, “shall they eat the fruit of their doings,” thus signalling that how he concludes his story shall fulfill that prophecy. He is thus obviously referring to what happened: Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed. (See my whole argument, which lists multiple lines of evidence Green ignores: pp. 508-09.)

• (28) “Why oh why, has Carrier been labouring to tell us that Origen’s content ‘precisely matches with … Hegesippus’?; and that Origen’s words ‘construct a sentence that says exactly what Josephus does not say (but Hegesippus does)’.”

Green is not very bright. So he does not grasp what my article plainly says. Origen’s details match Hegesippus, not his words, because Origen is not quoting anyone, he is paraphrasing in his own words—as I demonstrate extensively. If you look at the lines Green quotes from me in context this is obvious (p. 510). Green amateurishly doesn’t understand the difference between “content” (what I actually said) and “words,” even after supposedly having just read an article that extensively argues all the words Origen uses are his own and only the content is matched.

So it makes no sense for Green to ask why Origen’s words don’t match Hegesippus. And on the interpolation theory the only words that matched Josephus at the time were “James the brother of Jesus,” a phrase Origen would always have written here anyway (see below), and thus cannot indicate any quotation of Josephus or anyone else. So the question is whether adding to that phrase “the so-called Christ” came from a direct quote of Josephus or from Origen’s paraphrase; in other words, whether those three words are Josephus’s or Origen’s. My paper presents extensive, peer reviewed evidence they were Origen’s. And that they only entered into Josephus’s text afterward, by accident. Green has failed to respond to any of my actual arguments for that conclusion.

Indeed, Green goes on from here to repeatedly call “assumptions” what are in fact evidence-confirmed conclusions—an error we caught him at earlier. So I won’t catalogue all the other instances. You can compare what I actually argue in my paper with what he claims is a mere “assumption” and immediately tell he’s got the wrong idea of what an “assumption” is. Another signal of amateurism.

• (29) “Carrier also gives himself a get out of jail card by saying ‘Origen would be using a source that simply confused Hegesippus for Josephus’ (page 510, emphasis added). So he says perhaps it was someone else’s mistake, just in case. This posits an unknown source. Is this not ‘complicated’?”

This illustrates another amateur inability to understand the logic of probability. Indeed Green screws up twice here: first, not comprehending how low probabilities can sum to a high probability; and second, not even getting right what I said in the first place.

On the first point, if we have two possible theories that both result in the same conclusion, and one of them is simple, and so has, say, a high probability (let’s say, 60%), and the other is complex, and so has, say, a low probability (let’s say, 10%), the probability of the conclusion is thereby increased. Indeed, in the hypothetical example, from 60% to 70%. Not decreased as Green seems to assume. Because the probability of the conclusion equals the sum of all possible paths to that result.

Thus Green mistakes my pointing this out, for instead leaning entirely on a less probable hypothesis. No. When I say both paths lead to the same conclusion, I am talking about the sum of their probabilities being thereby increased. The low probability of one of them makes no difference to that fact. Innumeracy is indeed commonplace among amateurs, and I find in Christian apologists especially. It does not reduce the probability of a thesis to propose multiple possible ways it could happen. It actually in fact increases that probability.

On the second point, here is my actual argument that Green is screwing up (p. 510, emphasis now added):

That someone else conflated these two passages before Origen, a conflation that he later employed, is also too complicated: this theory requires us to invent an unattested source that Origen does not mention and assume that the same improbable errors were made in that source. Again, it is more likely that Origen would be using a source that simply confused Hegesippus for Josephus.

In other words, I did not argue “Origen used a source that simply confused Hegesippus for Josephus.” I argued that that theory, even as improbable as it is, is still more probable than an even more complex theory (“that someone else conflated these two passages before Origen”). Which is correct. But as Green didn’t actually comprehend what the argument I made actually was, he wrote a completely incompetent response to it.

Green also didn’t comprehend (to return now to my first point) that this theory, unlike the other one, adds to the probability of my overall thesis, even though it is itself less probable than the theory I said was most likely: that Origen is the one who made this mistake. And I give evidence that Origen did make just those kinds of mistake, and that Hegesippus and Josephus were indeed confused even by other scribes and authors. So I’ve met every needed burden here. This is not assumption. This is demonstration.

• (30) “[Origen] treats ‘called Christ’ as a statement that he needs to correct.”

There is no evidence of this. It is typical of amateurs to make things up, and then declare them facts. Which, by the way, is an actual example of substituting an assumption for a fact. Green is assuming this is what Origen is doing, but there is no evidence it is (the mere juxtaposition is not sufficient to conclude so), and even some evidence it isn’t. Indeed, the whole section where Green says this selectively ignores most of my actual arguments regarding that phrase and its history of use in Origen, the Bible, and other Christian authors. I needn’t repeat it here. You can see for yourself what my arguments actually are, and how they already refute Green (pp. 511 and 496-97).

• (31) “Carrier does not account for why Origen would write [‘brother of Jesus’], rather than the standard pious ‘the brother of the Lord’ in common with patristic writings.

Origen never uses “Brother of the Lord” as a phrase in his own words. So we have no need to explain why he wouldn’t use it here. But regardless, as an expert could explain to Green: Origen thinks he is paraphrasing a non-Christian source (and even goes out of his way to say so); so obviously he would not do so by attributing to that source the identification of Jesus as “Lord.” That I even need to explain this to Green is a paradigmatic example of his being an amateur.

One should also note (as evidently Green doesn’t know this), Origen would also say Jesus and not Lord because Origen does not consider “Lord” to be a valid biological reference. Indeed the only time Origen ever uses the phrase “brother of the Lord” in connection with James is to explain this in the very same passage in which he speaks of James as “the brother of Jesus” (Against Celsus 1.47):

Paul, a genuine disciple of Jesus, says that he regarded this James as a brother of the Lord, not so much on account of their relationship by blood, or of their being brought up together, as because of his virtue and doctrine.

Thus in Origen’s mind, James is only known “as” a brother of the Lord in this appellation; he is not called “the brother of the Lord,” nor would such a thing indicate his biological relationship. By contrast, Origen concludes by explaining Josephus should have credited the fall of Jerusalem to the death of “Jesus Christ,” and that is why he needed to reference Josephus’s error as crediting it instead to the death of the brother of “Jesus Christ” (not, incongruously, of “the Lord”), on account of the fact that James was merely the brother of Jesus, and Jesus was the one hailed as the Christ (hence “called Christ”). Origen does this twice in the same treatise (Ibid. 2.13): linking his conclusion as regarding “Jesus Christ,” and thus, as this required, placing “Jesus” and “Christ” in his premise as well. “Lord” would have no argumentative place here.

• (32) “Carrier still has to argue plausibly for the coincidence of the six word phrase and the mention of the death of James in Origen and Josephus.”

It’s actually only two words. All the other words would already have been there. Even if “tou damnaiou” wasn’t there (which thus already includes the article tou), it still would only be two words, because the insertion of “legomenou christou” grammatically requires an article, so a scribe would be compelled to add it in order to integrate those two words into the text. And indeed, a marginal note would not have omitted such an article for that reason: even commentary notes included them, to indicate what a phrase is commenting on (as I demonstrated with examples when schooling O’Neill on this same point: see Asscrank, “Second Case”). So it would already be there, ready for insertion. Note these are things an amateur wouldn’t likely know. Which is why Green doesn’t know them.

At this point Green again goes on to list a bunch of things as “assumptions” that in fact I actually provide evidence for as conclusions. His repeated error of calling evidence-based conclusions “assumptions” I’ve already remarked on several times now. Again, one need merely read my actual paper to find out the truth; and that Green has no valid response to it. So I needn’t bother detailing any of those mistakes here.

• (33) “Carrier does not mention or critique the alternative suggestion that it was in the libraries of the imperial city of Rome that Origen could have encountered the text of Josephus.”

“Possibly therefore probably” is a fallacy (Proving History, pp. 26-29). One often resorted to by amateurs and Christian apologists.

Origen only briefly visited Rome twice, once at the end of his life, and once (for less than a year) very early in life. And we have no evidence he wrote anything when there, or consulted the AJ there. Whereas we know he wrote almost all of his works in between, from his personally assembled college library in Caesarea (in the Levant, nearly two thousand miles from Rome). Which we can be certain contained a copy of the AJ, as it would be inconceivable that Origen would fail to include one for his school and research, and we know one was in that same library for Eusebius to consult sixty or so years later—albeit a copy that said different things than Origen’s did. (See the work of Carriker, whom I cite in my article on this point.)

But this is also moot. Another example of amateurism is confusing yourself as to what is even relevant. It does not matter where Origen read the AJ; the copy he read still did not contain the same text Eusebius later found in Origen’s library. And all extant texts of the AJ still demonstrably derive from the manuscript Eusebius consulted there, and none other. All of my paper’s conclusions require no other facts to be the case. I hypothesize a few possibilities from the high probability that Eusebius’s manuscript is a copy of Origen’s; but none are required for any of my paper’s conclusions. Another distinction that amateurs often can’t fathom.

• (34) “[A]t the end of the chapter Josephus only tells us, but does not explain, that the high priesthood was taken from Jesus ben Gamaliel and given to Matthias ben Theophilus. Josephus does leave explanations out, most likely where he has no explanation to hand.”

I think Josephus knew his readers were smarter than Green. When we look at what Josephus says, inferences are obvious. This succession Green is talking about concludes a story Josephus had begun with the very explanation Green thinks Josephus didn’t provide (AJ 20.211-214):

[Agrippa now became] more than ordinarily hated by his subjects, because he took those things away that belonged to them to adorn a foreign city. And now [also] Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, became the successor of Jesus, the son of Damneus, in the high priesthood, which the king [Agrippa] had taken from the other; on which account a sedition arose between the high priests … And from that time it principally came to pass that our city was greatly disordered, and that all things grew worse and worse among us.

Josephus goes on to discuss what else Agrippa and the Roman governor did this same year that exacerbated these problems (AJ 20.215-218), and then concludes (AJ 20.219-223):

[Agrippa] denied [labor] petitioners their request [for a temple building project] … and also deprived Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, of the high priesthood, and gave it to Matthias, the son of Theophilus, under whom the Jews’ war with the Romans took its beginning.

The very same year; so Agrippa is wildly deposing one priest after another, immediately after a popular protest in each case, all in the course of a single year—indeed, he had deposed Ananus for ben Damneus just a year before. So Josephus explains the next two successions as examples of Agrippa’s growing capriciousness and spite of the people: he was making arbitrary decisions to take away what the people wanted (just as with the parallel examples Josephus attaches to these successions of Agrippa denying or taking things away from the people), and this was causing chaos that eventually led to war. That’s called an explanation.

Note that Josephus does not explicitly say why deposing Jesus ben Damneus caused this dissention, only that it did; but instead communicates this through the parallelism he constructs of Agrippa taking things away from the people without justification. We thus are expected to infer the people liked Jesus ben Damneus and did not like Agrippa’s deposing him. When Josephus then builds the same parallel for another instance of Agrippa deposing a priest, and almost immediately after the first, the second inference is thus just as clear as the first. Likewise his linking both arbitrary acts with eventually contributing to the war.

Incidentally, this method of explaining, where Josephus creates context that renders obvious what he wants you to conclude happened (rather than spelling it out for the reader as to a child) is not only frequently employed by Josephus, but is exactly what he is doing with the story of the elevation of Jesus ben Damneus. Which is precisely why my interpretation of that episode makes sense. This is how Josephus writes.

• (35) “Carrier makes an unexpected prediction, that seems to run counter to the boldness he displays elsewhere: ‘we would not see direct manuscript evidence of this interpolation even if manuscripts of the AJ are found or examined that have not been included in current editions’ (page 514). What motivates one to predict that any future manuscript discoveries will not support one’s own case?”

This is another bizarre thing for Green to say. There is nothing unexpected about this in context, indeed my motives for the conclusion were extensively stated in the article, so there is no reason for Green to wonder at them. Here is the context he strips this quote from (emphasis now added):

Since all the AJ’s extant manuscripts probably descend from the same manuscript that contained this interpolation (for the reasons argued earlier), we would not see direct manuscript evidence of this interpolation, even if manuscripts of the AJ are found or examined that have not been included in current editions.

Notice the part Green stripped out: the actual reason I make this prediction (now above in bold). Green acts like I just made this prediction out of the blue, giving no reasons for it. When in fact I devoted three whole pages in my article giving reasons for it (pp. 492-94), and explicitly reference that fact in the very sentence Green is quoting. Only, he removed that part of the sentence. Is he thus lying to his readers, removing that half of the sentence deliberately? Or is he too stupid to understand the first half of the sentence? Your call.

Conclusion

There are two corrections to my article Green catches that actually would be worth making:

• Green is correct to note that it could be confusing of me to call a commonplace grammatical change (from “the word ‘who’” to “the word ‘the’”) a “verbatim” usage to someone who doesn’t read Greek; though it isn’t confusing to readers of Greek, which is why my peer reviewers didn’t think to advise a correction. The relative pronoun/definite article usage carry the same meaning, and quotations in antiquity were routinely modified grammatically to fit into their context. We are not saying Origen copied his own same phrase letter for letter; but that he said the same thing. However, if one wants to make a big deal of the variance between swapping a relative pronoun for a definite article, one can still call attention to that. And so it would be more precise of me not to say “verbatim” but “nearly verbatim” here (as I did elsewhere).
• Green is also correct to note the typo of “three other places,” where it should say “two other places” (as it’s a reference to Origen’s uses and not all four inclusive of Josephus). We and the editors missed this. It’s of course trivial.

Compare those two things, that he got right (and their complete triviality and irrelevance), with all the things he got wrong (which are not trivial and number in the dozens). You’ll see the Dunning-Kruger Effect right before your eyes. Because Green has just enough knowledge to catch minor typos, he thinks he is an expert and thus must be right about all that other stuff he totally screws up.

Green in fact gets almost nothing about my article right. His rebuttals are all rooted in ignorance and error—about my arguments, about the facts of the ancient world, about our sources. It’s simply a cascade of amateur mistakes. One really need only read my original article to see how badly he has hosed his critique of it. But hopefully I have helped illuminate many more points here, that educate on the difference between how hacks and experts approach texts, and historical arguments drawn from or about them, compared to how actual experts do.

This is what peer review is for. To weed out incompetent ramblings like Colin Green’s word-wall. And to make sure a case for a conclusion actually meets the expert standards of the field. Like my article.

-:-

Pagination Concordance

JECS :::: HHBC

489 :::: 337
490 :::: 338-39
491 :::: 339-40
492 :::: 340-41
493 :::: 341-42
494 :::: 342-44
495 :::: 344-45
496 :::: 345-47
497 :::: 347-48
498 :::: 348-49
499 :::: 349-50
500 :::: 350-51
501 :::: 351-52
502 :::: 352-54
503 :::: 354-55
504 :::: 355-56
505 :::: 356-57
506 :::: 357-58
507 :::: 358-60
508 :::: 360-61
509 :::: 361-62
510 :::: 362-63
511 :::: 363-64
512 :::: 364-65
513 :::: 365-67
514 :::: 367