How the author of the Slavonic version of Josephus Jewish War knew the Eusebian version of the Testimonium Flavianum

These are notes on the version of the Testimonium Flavianum (i.e., the passage about Jesus found in our manuscripts of Josephus Antiquities 18.63-64) in the Slavonic version of Josephus Jewish War, focusing on the question of whether it is independent of the version found in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History. It was originally posted on the Historical Jesus, higher criticism, and second temple Judaism Facebook forum.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1038530526485151

I am presuming the work N. A. Meschersky, published in English as: Josephus’ Jewish War and its Slavonic Version: A Synoptic Comparison of the English Translation by H. St. J. Thackeray with the Critical Edition by N. A. Meščerskij of the Slavonic Version in the Vilna Manuscript Translated into English by H. Leeming and L. Osinkina (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

1) Meschersky (Meščerskij), the editor of the text, divided the manuscripts into two types: the Chronographic edition (the Vilnius and Archival MSS) and the Separated edition (the other manuscripts). The author of the work, whom Meschersky calls the translator but I will call the Chronographer, was writing a history using various different sources (in Greek), not simply translating Josephus Jewish War. Meschersky considers the Chronographic manuscripts to represent the oldest form of the text, with the Vilna Chronograph being the best manuscript (p. 16). The Separated Edition was compiled by later editors of the Chronograph by drawing out the parts of the work they thought had come from Josephus Jewish War. They also expunged material they thought were obviously Christian references. They were not always correct in their decisions. Parts of the Separated Edition are from material drawn from the Chronographer’s other sources and some Christian references also made it in.

2) The Chronographer used Josephus Jewish War, and also the Byzantine historians John Malalas and George Hamartolos (as well as the Bible, of course) as sources for his Chronograph.

3) Meschersky thinks the additions to and omissions from the Jewish War are the work of the Chronographer, and to a lesser extent to the work of the excerpters who made the Separated Edition and to later copyists of the work (stated pp. 6-7, and then assumed throughout the work).

It is, of course, possible that Meschersky was wrong about that. His conclusion has been contested by some scholars, including Etienne Nodet, the late Henry Leeming, and his daughter Kate Leeming, all of whom hypothesize that at least some of the material in the Slavonic Jewish War came from a different version of Josephus Jewish War than the one known to us. (Parenthetically, I do not consider their arguments to be strong enough to establish their conclusion).

4) The passages about Jesus and John the Baptist known from the Greek manuscripts of Josephus Antiquities 18.63-64 (i.e., the Testimonium Flavianum) and 18.116-119 are not found in the known Greek manuscripts of Josephus Jewish War, with the exception of a single late manuscript (Codex Vossianus Gr. 72, from the 15th century). This raises the question of how these passages came to be in the text of the Chronograph/Slavonic version of the Jewish War.

5) Meschersky considered the Testimonium to be a complete interpolation into Josephus Antiquities (p. 34). He notes that the Testimonium is sometimes added to Greek texts of the Jewish War [usually at the end, not inserted within the text], in one case just after a location parallel to Book II, Chapter 9, part 3 [of the Slavonic][i.e., Codex Vossianus Gr.72]. Meschersky suggests as a possibility that the Chronographer used such an interpolated manuscript, but also notes that the passage is known in Old Russian literature from George Hamartolos.

6) I consider the latter possibility more likely. The full passage about Jesus and a shortened form of the passage about John the Baptist (containing only Ant. 18.116 and part of 117, omitting the rest of 18.117-119) are found in one of the Chronographer’s sources, the Chronicle of George Hamartolos (‘the sinner’) AKA George Monachus (‘the monk’) in Book 8, chapter 4. Hamartolos is almost certainly taking them from Eusebius Ecclesiastical History rather than from Josephus Antiquities, both because of the way the passage about John is found almost immediately before the Testimonium in Hamartolos’ text, as it is in Eusebius’s work, and, more importantly, Hamartolos quotes not just the Testimonium but also the next five words that follow immediately after it in Eusebius’s History.

Parenthetically, Dave Allen argued on this forum back on June 26, 2020 that the fact that the Slavonic version does not refer to John’s imprisonment at Machaerus suggests that that version of the John the Baptist story is more original than the known version. I would argue to the contrary that the absence of Machaerus in the Slavonic version is more likely due to its dependence on George Hamartolos, whose version of the John story contained only Ant. 18.116-117 and did not contain the mention of Machaerus in Ant. 18.119.

8 ) There is thus a clear line of transmission from Eusebius to George Hamartolos to the Chronographer. This does not exclude the possibility that the Chronographer also had other sources for his Jesus material, but he had at least Hamartolos, which depends on Eusebius.

*The pic is from Carl de Boor’s critical edition of George Hamartolus Chronicle [Georgii monachi chronicon, edidit Carolus de Boor (Lipsiae, in aedibus B. G. Teubneri, 1904)]. The first line has the end of the passage about John the Baptist, then the Testimonium Flavianum begins in the second line after a brief (six word) transition.