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Posted by on Feb 28, 2013 in History, Jesus | 3 comments

Joseph of Arimathea – fact or fiction? Er, fiction.

Joseph of Arimathea used to be used by William Lane Craig as a pillar of his truth claims for the Resurrection, itself one of the four cornerstones of his apology. Richard Carrier, amongst others, has provided some very interesting viewpoints on the historicity of this figure (or lack thereof). Craig no longer seems to reference J of A, quite possibly the result of the weakness of any positive evidence and the strength of negative evidence for his historicity.

Here are the first ever You Tube videos that I recorded. See what you think.

 

 

  • http://de-avanzada.blogspot.com/ Daosorios

    Wasn’t J of A a cornerstone in the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade plot?!? You mean, like there’s no Holy Grail after all?!?

  • Jeff

    Great work Jonathan, all really solid stuff! I’ve gotta check out the Priam parallels–that really caught my attention. Another rather uncanny parallel can be found in Josephus’ autobiography, The Life of Flavius Josephus:

    And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.

    That may sound only somewhat intriguing on first glance, but when you realize that Josephus’ Jewish name was Joseph bar Mathea (Joseph of Arimathea?), the level of intrigue rises quite a bit. If Mark the evangelist did indeed create Joseph of Arimathea as a fictionalized reference to Josephus, this would also have some pretty interesting implications for the dating of the gospels. The Life of Flavius Josephus is dated to around the very end of the first century, which would place all four gospels into the second century.

  • http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/ Jonathan MS Pearce

    Thanks, Jeff. Really interesting about Josephus’ name. Though I knew of the burial parallel, I was unaware of the name similarity!