Atheists do history bad

Timothy O'Neill made a name for himself over on Vox Popoli for saying stuff as Vox Day likes to hear. "Thanks" to Mark Tapscott, we're being reintroduced to "Jesus: The Evidence", likely Ian Wilson in... 1984. Some of that evidence comes from Whiston's edition of Josephus.

O'Neill in 2020 didn't like that Richard Carrier (among others) refused the Whiston testimony. O'Neill's conclusion: So the case is not closed. The question is moot. And it is likely to remain so, unless new evidence appears.

Unlike O'Neill and Carrier both, I am not an atheist. I will say this on Carrier's behalf: where a case is not closed, that case is worthless as evidence for another case. This pericope is no Josephan witness to Jesus as "Christ" (per Whiston). It is at best a text-transmission witness to (Lukan proto-orthodox) creeds. To the extent it is "moot", the historian's duty is to drop it. Move on to Tacitus and the younger Pliny. (Or for that matter to 1 Clement, as Carrier has done already.)

As to why O'Neill has so failed his duty as historian: I detect that he doesn't like Carrier personally. This is O'Neill's right as a human being. Carrier has chosen a lifestyle which, for my part, I judge objectively deviant from basic human morals (however natural be these impulses for a male animal).

- but we're not discussing Carrier. We are discussing Josephus: whether it be in character to write what Eusebius, then Jerome, says he wrote. It be not. The pericope drifted in from elsewhere. And unlike the extension to Mark which we Catholics heard yesterday morning; this was done deliberately to ape Josephan style.

That in style it was also Lukan is suggestive, to me. This forger was not a Marcionite; I don't think Marcion was much up for copying Jewish material of any sort. I figure: someone in Rome. Rome could appreciate Josephus and Luke both: because although both texts came from disbelievers in Rome's religion, they each supported Roman supremacy. Whoever fathered (or mothered) this cuckoo upon Josephus might, indeed, not have been a Christian. But why we should accept Roman propaganda any more than Eusebian propaganda, is not a question I care to entertain. It's bogus and O'Neill shouldn't entertain it either.