An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavium

This is not the piece by Pines on the text transmitted by ‘Abd al-Jabbâr. This is a different booklet by Pines. It gives the evidence for a survival of the original wording of Josephus’s note on Jesus, transmitted in Arabic from Syriac, and also in Syriac, by several historians. He also quotes a Latin version of the same words in Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus. He also brings in a Greek line of transmission in the Byzantine historians which is indirectly supported by Eusebius and Origen. Pines doesn’t bring the Old Slavic wording into consideration, for reasons of space. It is, however, obvious at a glance that the new evidence found by Pines and the Slavic support each other. We can now say that although there are minor differences, there are FOUR OR PERHAPS FIVE INDEPENDENT lines of transmission of an original form of the passage, closely resembling the type of wording you know from the Slavic version. They are (a) Slavic from Greek; (b) Greek in quotations independent (probably) of the Greek transmission behind the Slavic, and certainly independent of the commonly known Greek text; (c) Arabic from Syriac historians, in quotation, independent of the Syriac translations of the commonly known Greek text of Josephus; (d) at least one Syriac line of transmission in quotation independent of the Syriac behind the Arabic just mentioned; (e) Jerome in quotation in Latin independent of all the others. It seems certain now that the familiar Greek text really is drastically re-worded by Christian editors, and that we can at last read the original.