title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: The gastrocnemius is located with the soleus in the posterior (back) compartment of the leg. The lateral head originates from the lateral condyle of the femur, while the medial head originates from the medial condyle of the femur. Its other end forms a common tendon with the soleus muscle; this tendon is known as the calcaneal tendon or Achilles tendon and inserts onto the posterior surface of the calcaneus, or heel bone. It is considered a superficial muscle as it is located directly under skin, and its shape may often be visualized through the skin.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: Deep to the gastrocnemius (farther from the skin) is the soleus muscle. Some anatomists consider both to be a single muscle—the triceps surae or "three-headed [muscle] of the calf"—since they share a common insertion via the Achilles tendon. The plantaris muscle and a portion of its tendon run between the two muscles, which is involved in "locking" the knee from the standing position. Since the anterior compartment of the leg is lateral to the tibia, the bulge of muscle medial to the tibia on the anterior side is actually the posterior compartment. The soleus is superficial to the mid-shaft of the tibia.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: 39% of individuals have a sesamoid bone called the fabella in the lateral (outer) head of the gastrocnemius muscle.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: Along with the soleus muscle, the gastrocnemius forms half of the calf muscle. Its function is plantar flexing the foot at the ankle joint and flexing the leg at the knee joint.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: The gastrocnemius is primarily involved in running, jumping and other "fast" movements of leg, and to a lesser degree in walking and standing. This specialization is connected to the predominance of white muscle fibers (type II fast twitch) present in the gastrocnemius, as opposed to the soleus, which has more red muscle fibers (type I slow twitch) and is the primary active muscle when standing still.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: The plan to use the gastrocnemius in running, jumping, knee and plantar flexing is created in the precentral gyrus in the cerebrum of the brain. Once a plan is produced, the signal is sent to and down an upper motor neuron. The signal is passed through the internal capsule and decussates, or crosses, in the medulla oblongata, specifically in the lateral corticospinal tract. The signal continues down through the anterior horn of the spinal cord where the upper motor neuron synapses with the lower motor neuron. Signal propagation continues down the anterior rami (Lumbar 4-5 and Sacral 1-5) of the sacral plexus. The sciatic nerve branches off of the sacral plexus in which the tibial and common fibular nerves are wrapped in one sheath. The tibial nerve eventually separates from the sciatic nerve and innervates the gastrocnemius muscle. Thus, completing the plan the brain had originally started with, so that the actions of running, standing, and jumping could be executed.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: The gastrocnemius muscle is prone to spasms, which are painful, involuntary contractions of the muscle that may last several minutes.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: A severe ankle dorsiflexion force may result in an Medial Gastrocnemius Strain (MGS) injury of the muscle, commonly referred to as a "torn" or "strained" calf muscle, which is acutely painful and disabling.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: The gastrocnemius muscle may also become inflamed due to overuse. Anti-inflammatory medications and physical therapy (heat, massage, and stretching) may be useful.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: Anatomical abnormalities involving the medial head of gastrocnemius muscle result in popliteal artery entrapment syndrome.


title: Gastrocnemius muscle

text: In a 1967 EMG study, Herman and Bragin concluded that its most important role was plantar flexing in large contractions and in rapid development of tension.


title: All Out (2021)

text: The 2021 All Out was the third annual All Out professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by All Elite Wrestling (AEW). It took place during Labor Day weekend on September 5, 2021, at the Now Arena in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It was the first All Out event to be held on a Sunday. It was also AEW's first pay-per-view held outside of Daily's Place in Jacksonville, Florida since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The event aired through traditional PPV providers, as well as on B/R Live in North America and FITE TV internationally.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Ten matches were contested at the event, including one on the Buy In pre-show. In the main event, Kenny Omega defeated Christian Cage to retain the AEW World Championship. In other prominent matches, CM Punk defeated Darby Allin


title: All Out (2021)

text: (which was also Punk's AEW debut match and Punk's first professional wrestling match in seven years); Chris Jericho defeated MJF in a career threatening match; Lucha Brothers (Penta El Zero Miedo and Rey Fénix) defeated The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) in a steel cage match to win the AEW World Tag Team Championship; Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. defeated Kris Statlander to retain the AEW Women's World Championship; and Miro defeated Eddie Kingston to retain the AEW TNT Championship in the opening bout. The event also saw the AEW debuts of Minoru Suzuki, Adam Cole, Ruby Soho (who won the women's Casino Battle Royale), and Bryan Danielson (the latter two formerly known as Ruby Riott and Daniel Bryan, respectively, in WWE).


title: All Out (2021)

text: Tickets for All Out sold out within a day, and the event was attended by over 10,000 people. It also received over 200,000 pay-per-view buys, making it the most bought non-WWE professional wrestling PPV event since 1999. All Out received critical acclaim, particularly with regard to the cage match and the newsworthy surprise debuts, and was also rated highly rated by fans.


title: All Out (2021)

text: All Out is a pay-per-view (PPV) held annually during Labor Day weekend by All Elite Wrestling (AEW) since 2019. It is one of AEW's "Big Four" PPVs, which also includes Double or Nothing, Full Gear, and Revolution, their four biggest shows produced quarterly. Announced on May 31, 2021, the third All Out event was scheduled to be held on September 5 in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, returning the event to the Now Arena (formerly Sears Centre Arena), which is where the inaugural All Out was held. It was AEW's first PPV held outside of Daily's Place and the adjacent TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, following AEW's resumption of live touring in July 2021. Presale tickets were available July 8 before they went on sale on July 9 to the general public and quickly sold out.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Following the September 3 episode of "Rampage", TNT aired a half-hour television special called "Countdown to All Out" which averaged 361,000 viewers. "Champion Sound" by Cypress Hill was the official theme song for the event.


title: All Out (2021)

text: All Out featured professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches. Storylines were produced on AEW's weekly television programs, "Dynamite" and "Rampage", the supplementary online streaming shows, "Dark" and "", and The Young Bucks' YouTube series "Being The Elite".


title: All Out (2021)

text: Kenny Omega has held the AEW World Championship since December 2, 2020, when he captured the title from Jon Moxley at Winter Is Coming. In March 2021, when Christian Cage was about to make his first "Dynamite" appearance, Omega and his manager Don Callis interrupted the segment, eventually leading to a confrontation between Omega and Christian. After Christian racked up eight wins, he was anointed in August 2021 as the number one contender for the AEW World Championship, The match was subsequently scheduled for All Out. Before the event, Christian defeated Omega to win the Impact World Championship on the debut episode of "Rampage" on August 13, which was Omega's first singles loss since the 2019 Full Gear event.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Beginning in July 2021, rumors began circulating that former WWE wrestler CM Punk, who had been retired from professional wrestling since 2014, had signed with AEW. At Fight for the Fallen on July 28, Darby Allin announced that he wanted to face the "best in the world", a nickname Punk had used during his time in WWE. At The First Dance on August 20, Punk made his highly anticipated debut for AEW and challenged Allin to a match at All Out.


title: All Out (2021)

text: In September 2020, Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) started a storyline with Chris Jericho on whether MJF could join Jericho's faction, The Inner Circle. At the Full Gear event on November 7, 2020, MJF defeated Jericho, thus per the match stipulation, he joined Jericho's faction. On the March 10, 2021 "Dynamite", as Jericho was about to eject MJF from the faction for plotting against him, MJF revealed that he had secretly built his own faction instead: The Pinnacle, which attacked and laid out The Inner Circle. At Blood and Guts on May 5, The Pinnacle defeated The Inner Circle in a Blood and Guts match when MJF threatened to throw Jericho off a steel cage, leading to The Inner Circle surrendering. Despite this, MJF threw Jericho off the cage. When Jericho pursued a singles match against MJF, the latter in July set Jericho a challenge to whereby MJF would choose Jericho's match-types and opponents in a five-match series, but Jericho could not lose any match if he wanted to face MJF in the fifth match. In the "Labors of Jericho" storyline, Jericho beat Shawn Spears, Nick Gage, Juventud Guerrera, and Wardlow, but lost the final match against MJF on the August 18 "Dynamite", where everything "Judas" was banned, which included his signature move, the Judas Effect, which MJF used on Jericho. The following week, Jericho challenged MJF to another match at All Out, stipulating that if Jericho lost, he would never wrestle another match in AEW; MJF accepted.


title: All Out (2021)

text: At the inaugural All Out event in 2019, The Lucha Brothers (Penta El Zero Miedo and Rey Fénix) defeated The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) in a ladder match. On November 7, 2020 at Full Gear, The Young Bucks captured the AEW World Tag Team Championship from FTR (Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler). After The Young Bucks conducted several successful title defenses due to illegal interference by their faction, The Elite, it was announced on the August 18, 2021 episode of "Dynamite" that The Young Bucks would defend the championship at All Out in a Steel Cage match to prevent any outside interference, and their challengers would be determined by an eliminator tournament consisting of four tag teams. The following week, The Lucha Brothers defeated the Varsity Blonds (Brian Pillman Jr. and Griff Garrison) to advance to the tournament finals, which occurred on the August 27 episode of "Rampage", where The Lucha Brothers defeated Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) to qualify for the steel cage tag title match.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On May 30, Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. defeated Hikaru Shida at Double or Nothing to win the AEW Women's World Championship. Meanwhile, Kris Statlander returned to television in March 2021 after being out with an anterior cruciate ligament injury since June 2020. Statlander went on a winning streak and eventually became the number one ranked competitor in the women's division; due to this, AEW announced on August 25 that Statlander would challenge Baker for the title at All Out.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Miro defeated Darby Allin for the AEW TNT Championship on the May 12 episode of "Dynamite". On the August 25 episode of "Dynamite", Miro, as "The Redeemer", challenged Eddie Kingston for being a "sinner". On the August 27 episode of "Rampage", after Miro attacked and unmasked Fuego Del Sol, Kingston attacked Miro. A TNT Championship match between the two was scheduled for All Out.


title: All Out (2021)

text: In February 2021, AEW was reported to have established a working relationship with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW). On the August 25 episode of "Dynamite", Jon Moxley said that he had sent out an open challenge to Japanese wrestlers, but only NJPW wrestler Satoshi Kojima had accepted, therefore he and Kojima would wrestle at All Out.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On the August 11 episode of "Dynamite", when Q. T. Marshall and his allies attacked the son of commentator Tony Schiavone, fellow commentator Paul Wight came to the aid of the Schiavones. The following week, Wight announced he would face Marshall at All Out, marking his first match in AEW after having signed with the company as a commentator in February.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On September 2, a 10-man tag team match pitting Best Friends (Orange Cassidy, Chuck Taylor, and Wheeler Yuta) and Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) against the Hardy Family Office (Matt Hardy, Private Party (Isiah Kassidy and Marq Quen), and The Hybrid 2 (Angélico and Jack Evans)) was announced for the Buy-In pre-show.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On the August 11 episode of "Dynamite", a match between Andrade El Idolo and Pac was scheduled for All Out. On September 1, it was announced that the match would instead take place on a future episode of "Rampage" due to Pac having travel issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic in England.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On the 'Buy-In' pre-show, Best Friends (Chuck Taylor, Orange Cassidy and Wheeler Yuta) and Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus) faced the Hardy Family Office (Matt Hardy, Isiah Kassidy, Marq Quen, Angélico and Jack Evans). Luchasaurus performed the "Tail Whip" on Angélico, after-which Jungle Boy locked Angélico in the "Snare Trap" hold for the submission victory at 9 minutes and 25 seconds. Post-match, The Butcher made his AEW return by attacking Cassidy, And joining the Hardy Family Office. Jurassic Express, Varsity Blonds, Dante Martin, and some Dark Order members saved Cassidy from a haircut by The Hardy Family Office.


title: All Out (2021)

text: The commentators for the show were Excalibur, Jim Ross, and Tony Schiavone. The event's ring announcer was Justin Roberts, while the interviewer was Alex Marvez.


title: All Out (2021)

text: In the opening match of the pay-per-view, Miro defended the AEW TNT Championship against Eddie Kingston. When Miro performed a German suplex on Kingston, the latter pulled a turnbuckle pad off. Kingston landed a DDT, but the referee was temporarily distracted by the turnbuckle pad, leading to Miro kicking out of the pin attempt. The referee stopped Kingston from sending Miro into the exposed turnbuckle. With the referee's vision obscured, Miro hit a low blow on Kingston. Miro followed with a roundhouse kick and a "Machka Kick" (bicycle kick to the head), pinning Kingston at 13 minutes and 25 seconds to win and retain the championship.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Next, Jon Moxley faced NJPW's Satoshi Kojima. Moxley avoided Kojima's lariat and twice performed the "Paradigm Shift" for the pinfall victory at 12 minutes and 10 seconds. Following the match, Moxley was confronted by NJPW wrestler Minoru Suzuki in Suzuki's unannounced AEW debut. They traded strikes before Suzuki eventually landed a "Gotch-style Piledriver" to put Moxley down.


title: All Out (2021)

text: The third match saw Britt Baker (accompanied by Jamie Hayter and Rebel) defending the AEW Women's World Championship against Kris Statlander (accompanied by Orange Cassidy). Baker avoided Statlander's "Area 451" splash and escaped the "Spider Crab" submission hold. Statlander kicked out of two pins, one after Baker landed a "Pittsburgh Sunrise", and one after Baker landed a curb stomp. Baker applied the "Lockjaw" hold for the submission victory and successful title defense at 11 minutes and 25 seconds.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Following this was the steel cage match where the Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) defended the AEW World Tag Team Championship against the Lucha Brothers (Penta El Zero Miedo and Rey Fénix). The former team were accompanied by Brandon Cutler and had Don Callis join commentary, while the latter team were accompanied by Alex Abrahantes and had rapper Muelas de Gallo perform their entrance theme live. The Young Bucks performed "More Bang for Your Buck" on Fénix, but Penta broke up the pin. The Young Bucks used a shoe covered in thumbtacks passed to them by Cutler, and then landed a "BTE Trigger" on Penta, but Fénix broke up the pin. Fénix used the thumbtack shoe, then landed a "Black Fire Driver" on Matt, but Matt kicked out of the pin. Fénix, Penta and Nick were bloodied. The Lucha Brothers performed a diving stomp into a "Fear Factor" piledriver on Nick, but Matt broke up the pin. Fénix dove off the top of the cage with a crossbody onto the other three men. Finally the Lucha Brothers performed an "LB Driver" (aided piledriver) on Nick. Penta pinned Nick at 22 minutes and 5 seconds, with Fénix restraining Matt. As a result, the Lucha Brothers won the match and the titles.


title: All Out (2021)

text: The next match was the 21-woman Casino Battle Royale to determine the next contender for the AEW Women's World Championship. The final entrant was Ruby Soho, making her unannounced AEW debut. The final three women left in the match were Soho, Thunder Rosa and Nyla Rose; Rosa dropkicked Rose off the ring apron to eliminate Rose. On the apron, Soho landed a jumping enzuigiri kick to eliminate Rosa at 22 minutes.


title: All Out (2021)

text: The sixth match saw Chris Jericho facing MJF where Jericho's AEW in-ring career was on the line. Fozzy guitarist Billy Grey performed Jericho's Judas entrance. Jericho powerbombed MJF on the ring apron, damaging MJF's lower back. Wardlow walked towards ringside but was attacked by Jake Hager, drawing out two other referees to stop the brawl, and distracting Aubrey Edwards, the referee in the ring. MJF hit Jericho with Jericho's baseball bat and then a "Judas Effect". In a false finish, Edwards counted a successful pin for MJF because she did not see Jericho's foot placed on the bottom rope, but Paul Turner, one of the referees who had come out, corrected her error and the match was restarted. Jericho countered MJF's "Salt of the Earth" armbar, later placing MJF in the "Walls of Jericho" for the submission victory at 21 minutes and 15 seconds. The Inner Circle celebrated Jericho's win.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Next, CM Punk faced Darby Allin, in Punk's return to the professional wrestling ring. When Punk first hit the "Go to Sleep", Allin fell to the floor and had to beat the count at nine. Later, Punk sat up to avoid Allin's "Coffin Drop", then kicked out of Allin's "Last Supper" cradle pin attempt. Allin tried for a poison rana, but Punk countered into another "Go to Sleep" for the pinfall victory at 16 minutes and 40 seconds. Post-match, Sting came out and shook Punk's hand, then Punk shook Allin's hand.


title: All Out (2021)

text: In the penultimate match, Paul Wight faced Q. T. Marshall, who was accompanied by Nick Comoroto and Aaron Solow. Wight fended off Comoroto and Solow, then hit a chokeslam on Marshall, leading to a pinfall victory at 3 minutes and 10 seconds.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Jon Moxley gave a speech hyping his future match against Minoru Suzuki, then Malakai Black gave a speech hyping his future match against Dustin Rhodes.


title: All Out (2021)

text: In the main event, Kenny Omega (accompanied by Don Callis) defended the AEW World Championship against Christian Cage. Christian speared Omega off the ring apron through a table. When Christian applied a high-angle modified cloverleaf hold, Callis called for the Good Brothers (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson) to interfere, but Christian fended off Anderson and caused Omega to knee Gallows. Christian performed the "Killswitch" on Omega, but Omega kicked out of the pin. When Christian tried for a "Killswitch" from the top rope, Omega raked the eyes and performed a "One-Winged Angel" from the top rope, then pinning Christian at 21 minutes and 20 seconds to win and retain the title.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Post-match, Omega celebrated with the rest of the Elite, including the Young Bucks. When the Elite attacked Christian, Jurassic Express (including Marko Stunt) tried to help, but were overwhelmed. Omega proclaimed that the only people who had a chance of beating him were either not in AEW, retired, or already dead. Omega was interrupted by Adam Cole in his unannounced AEW debut, who superkicked Jungle Boy and embraced the Elite; Cole declared that the Elite were unstoppable. As Omega bid the crowd goodnight, he was interrupted by Bryan Danielson in his unannounced AEW debut, and his first appearance on television since April 30, 2021, who allied with Christian and Jurassic Express. This reignited a brawl. Omega fled and the Elite lost the brawl, culminating in Danielson's running knee to Nick Jackson's head.


title: All Out (2021)

text: AEW President and Chief Executive Officer Tony Khan stated after the event that All Out was the most watched AEW PPV ever. Dave Meltzer, writing for the "Wrestling Observer Newsletter", stated that All Out did over 205,000 PPV buys, for an estimated $10 million in PPV revenue, of which AEW would receive an estimated $4.01 million. Meltzer further wrote that this was the most bought non-WWE professional wrestling PPV ever, outdoing the 1999 Spring Stampede and the 1999 Uncensored PPVs. 10,164 live tickets were sold, earning AEW $700,000.


title: All Out (2021)

text: All Out received critical acclaim, particularly with regard to the cage match and the newsworthy surprise debuts. Dave Meltzer stated that All Out is a candidate for the best U.S.-based PPV show in history. Although "a few" other shows were better than All Out based on "match quality", Meltzer felt that All Out truly excelled in its "atmosphere, news value, crowd, announcing match depth and creativity". On "Wrestling Observer Radio", Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez agreed that the Lucha Brothers-Young Bucks match was the best cage match they had ever seen, and one of the best AEW matches ever. Meltzer rated the cage match 5.75 stars, Omega-Christian 4.25 stars, while Miro-Kingston, Moxley-Kojima, Baker-Statlander all received 4.00 stars.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Writing for "Pro Wrestling Dot Net", Jason Powell wrote that All Out was all "hits" and no "misses", one of his "favorite pro wrestling pay-per-view events", with a "great atmosphere". All Out exceeded his expectations as "the company delivered some huge surprises" and "Punk truly shined in his return", with no "blatantly obvious" ring rust from his long time away from a wrestling ring. Powell added that Allin became "a bigger star for having a competitive match with Punk". The cage match's "free for all format played to the strengths of both teams" by removing traditional tag team rules. Powell praised the teams for "not going ridiculously overboard with spots off the top of the massive cage". Meanwhile, the women's battle royale was described as "the perfect choice" to follow the "outstanding" cage match, as the "entrances and eliminations kept the fans engaged", while the Soho-Rosa finish was "strong and dramatic". Lastly, the pre-show match was "a good spot-fest" that "got the live crowd going."


title: All Out (2021)

text: Brent Brookhouse of "CBSSports.com" stated, "What already promised to be one of the biggest shows in AEW history delivered beyond any reasonable expectations" with "some of the best matches in the promotion's history" and more importantly "lasting memories" provided by the debuts of Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson. Lucha Brothers-Young Bucks was extremely "wild" and was rated A+, Moxley-Kojima featured "hard-hitting action" and was rated A−, Omega-Christian was rated B+, "very good" but the tired crowd "clearly started to burn out" at the end, while Wight-Marshall was meant to "bring the crowd back down ... and played out exactly as such, not delivering much of anything", being rated C+.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Justin Barasso of "Sports Illustrated" described All Out as "an outstanding pay-per-view from start to finish, with [Bryan] Danielson serving as the perfect exclamation point to close out a historic night in pro wrestling." Barasso described CM Punk's showing as "impressive", declaring that Punk and Danielson were stars who could elevate AEW "to the next level in terms of marketability, ratings, and international presence". Baker-Statlander successfully continued "Baker's ascent to stardom", which featured Statlander receiving "a tremendous beating from Baker" while having "just enough offense" herself. Omega-Christian was "hard-fought", but suspicions of "post-match surprises" surrounded the match, ultimately leading to Danielson's debut "forever changing the trajectory of AEW and all of pro wrestling."


title: All Out (2021)

text: Writing for "Pro Wrestling Torch", Wade Keller stated that Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson's debuts were "wild", "worked really well back-to-back", and outshone the rest of the show. The cage match was rated 4.50 stars, "really creative, exciting, and hard-hitting throughout", and was not too long. Jericho-MJF was rated 3.00 stars, "decent to good most of the way, but the crowd really elevated the final minutes with the clever near falls and false ending". Punk-Allin was rated 3.50 stars, which "worked for the moment and for this stage of Punk's return", and "most of the match fans were into both wrestlers". Miro-Kingston was rated 2.75 stars, for "setting the tone" well without "burning out the crowd", the "mix of styles blended well" and the match "was intense and tight throughout".


title: All Out (2021)

text: Dave Meltzer stated that "many have talked about [All Out] as the best U.S.-based PPV show in history". Meanwhile, "Pro Wrestling Dot Net" polled viewers on how they would rate the event, with 87% giving All Out an 'A' grade, and 9% giving a 'B' grade. For the best match of the event, 68% of polled viewers chose the cage match, while 19% chose Punk-Allin.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Two matches that were promoted at All Out had the results of Malakai Black defeating Dustin Rhodes on the next episode of "Dynamite" on September 8, while Andrade El Idolo defeated Pac on the next episode of "Rampage" on September 10.


title: All Out (2021)

text: In the third match promoted at All Out, Minoru Suzuki was defeated by Jon Moxley in the latter's hometown of Cincinnati on the September 8 "Dynamite". Moxley and Eddie Kingston then teamed together to wrestle Suzuki and Lance Archer in the "Rampage: Grand Slam" episode that aired on September 24, where Kingston pinned Archer. Later on the October 15 "Buy In" pre-show to "Rampage", Suzuki lost to Bryan Danielson. Suzuki ended his American excursion in late October 2021.


title: All Out (2021)

text: As the Elite gave speeches on the September 8 "Dynamite", they were interrupted by Bryan Danielson in his first appearance on TNT. When they attacked him, he was saved by Christian Cage, Jurassic Express, and Frankie Kazarian. Adam Cole's first AEW match saw him defeating Kazarian on the September 15 "Dynamite". After Danielson and Cole issued challenges, Danielson wrestled Kenny Omega to a 30-minute time limit draw in a non-title match on the September 22 "Dynamite: Grand Slam", while Cole, Nick Jackson and Matt Jackson defeated Christian Cage, Jungle Boy, and Luchasaurus on the September 24 airing of "Rampage: Grand Slam" when Cole pinned Luchasaurus.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On the September 8 "Dynamite", CM Punk gave a speech thanking Darby Allin, Sting and the fans. While Punk discussed what was next for him, he was interrupted by commentator Taz to start a feud between Punk and Taz's group, which included Powerhouse Hobbs and Hook. Punk defeated Hobbs via pinfall on the September 24 airing of "Rampage: Grand Slam".


title: All Out (2021)

text: Ruby Soho made her "Dynamite" debut on September 8, her first appearance on TNT by defeating Jamie Hayter, an ally of Britt Baker. Soho then pinned Rebel, Baker's other ally, in a trios match on the September 10 "Rampage" between Soho, Kris Statlander and Riho versus Baker, Hayter and Rebel. Later in an AEW Women's Championship match on the September 22 "Dynamite: Grand Slam", Baker defeated Soho via submission after Hayter interfered mid-match.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On the September 8 "Dynamite", MJF claimed that the All Out match between him and Jericho was restarted due to extreme bias against him. MJF then insulted Brian Pillman Jr.'s daughter, mother, and aunt, starting a feud between the two men. MJF defeated Pillman via submission on the September 22 "Dynamite: Grand Slam".


title: All Out (2021)

text: On the September 8 "Dynamite", Tully Blanchard called for a match between Shawn Spears and Darby Allin, as part of Blanchard's rivalry with Sting. After Allin defeated Spears on the September 15 "Dynamite", Allin and Sting brawled with Blanchard and FTR, resulting in Sting receiving a piledriver and having his facepaint wiped off. Later on the September 22 "Dynamite: Grand Slam", Allin and Sting defeated FTR, with Sting submitting Harwood.


title: All Out (2021)

text: Miro next successfully defended his TNT Championship against Fuego Del Sol on the "Rampage" episode that aired on September 17. Miro continued attacking Del Sol post-match, leading to Sammy Guevara saving Del Sol. On the September 29 episode of "Dynamite", Miro lost the TNT Championship to Guevara, partly due to Miro being sent into corner turnbuckles he exposed, and also Del Sol's interference.


title: All Out (2021)

text: As Dan Lambert was issuing an open challenge on behalf of American Top Team and Men of the Year (Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky) on the September 15 "Rampage", he was interrupted by Chris Jericho and Jake Hager, starting a feud. Men of the Year defeated Jericho and Hager on the September 24 airing of "Rampage: Grand Slam" when Lambert interfered.


title: All Out (2021)

text: The Lucha Brothers next successfully defended their AEW World Tag Team Championships against the Butcher and the Blade on the "Rampage" episode that aired on September 17.


title: All Out (2021)

text: As part of the feud between the Best Friends and the Hardy Family Office, Matt Hardy directed Jack Evans to wrestle Orange Cassidy in a Hair vs. Hair match. Cassidy defeated Evans on the October 1 "Rampage" and the Best Friends shaved Evans' hair.


title: All Out (2021)

text: On the November 24 episode of "Dynamite", video footage of All Out's Casino Battle Royale was replayed, which showed that Riho was not actually eliminated from that match; hence, Riho was awarded a non-title match against AEW Women's Champion Britt Baker, which if Riho won, would result in a future title shot. The match, billed as a "Black Friday Deal" match, was held later that night, airing on the November 26 episode of "Rampage," where Riho defeated Baker, thus granting her the future title match. The match took place on January 8, 2022 at AEW Battle of the Belts in Charlotte, which Baker won by submission.


title: All Out (2021)

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki> although Riho was considered eliminated from the All Out battle royal by Jamie Hayter at the time of the event, video evidence was shown during the November 24, 2021 "Dynamite" that Riho was not properly eliminated.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: The Belgian Revolution (, ) was the conflict which led to the secession of the southern provinces (mainly the former Southern Netherlands) from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the establishment of an independent Kingdom of Belgium.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: The people of the south were mainly Flemings and Walloons. Both peoples were traditionally Roman Catholic as contrasted with Protestant-dominated (Dutch Reformed) people of the north. Many outspoken liberals regarded King William I's rule as despotic. There were high levels of unemployment and industrial unrest among the working classes.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: On 25 August 1830, riots erupted in Brussels and shops were looted. Theatregoers who had just watched the nationalistic opera "La muette de Portici" joined the mob. Uprisings followed elsewhere in the country. Factories were occupied and machinery destroyed. Order was restored briefly after William committed troops to the Southern Provinces but rioting continued and leadership was taken up by radicals, who started talking of secession.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: Dutch units saw the mass desertion of recruits from the southern provinces and pulled out. The States-General in Brussels voted in favour of secession and declared independence. In the aftermath, a National Congress was assembled. King William refrained from future military action and appealed to the Great Powers. The resulting 1830 London Conference of major European powers recognized Belgian independence. Following the installation of Leopold I as "King of the Belgians" in 1831, King William made a belated attempt to reconquer Belgium and restore his position through a military campaign. This "Ten Days' Campaign" failed because of French military intervention. The Dutch accepted the decision of the London conference and Belgian independence in 1839 by signing the Treaty of London.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: After the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the Congress of Vienna created a kingdom for the House of Orange-Nassau, thus combining the United Provinces of the Netherlands with the former Austrian Netherlands to create a strong buffer state north of France; with the addition of those provinces the Netherlands became a rising power. Symptomatic of the tenor of diplomatic bargaining at Vienna was the early proposal to reward Prussia for its fight against Napoleon with the former Habsburg territory. When the United Kingdom insisted on retaining the former Dutch Ceylon and the Cape Colony, which it had seized while the Netherlands was ruled by Napoleon, the new Kingdom of the Netherlands was compensated with these southern provinces (modern Belgium).


title: Belgian Revolution

text: The revolution was due to a combination of factors, the main one being the difference of religion (Catholic in today's Belgium, Protestant in today's Netherlands) and the general lack of autonomy given to the south.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: Catholic partisans watched with excitement the unfolding of the July Revolution in France, details of which were swiftly reported in the newspapers. On 25 August 1830, at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, an uprising followed a special performance, in honor of William I's birthday, of Daniel Auber's "La Muette de Portici" "(The Mute Girl of Portici)", a sentimental and patriotic opera set against Masaniello's uprising against the Spanish masters of Naples in the 17th century. After the duet, "Amour sacré de la patrie", (Sacred love of Fatherland) with Adolphe Nourrit in the tenor role, many audience members left the theater and joined the riots which had already begun. The crowd poured into the streets shouting patriotic slogans. The rioters swiftly took possession of government buildings. The following days saw an explosion of the desperate and exasperated proletariat of Brussels, who rallied around the newly created flag of the Brussels independence movement which was fastened to a standard with shoelaces during a street fight and used to lead a counter-charge against the forces of Prince William.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: William I sent his two sons, Crown-Prince William and Prince Frederik to quell the riots. William was asked by the Burghers of Brussels to come to the town alone, with no troops, for a meeting; this he did, despite the risks. The affable and moderate Crown Prince William, who represented the monarchy in Brussels, was convinced by the Estates-General on 1 September that the administrative separation of north and south was the only viable solution to the crisis. His father rejected the terms of accommodation that Prince William proposed. King William I attempted to restore the established order by force, but the 8,000 Dutch troops under Prince Frederik were unable to retake Brussels in bloody street fighting (23–26 September). The army was withdrawn to the fortresses of Maastricht, Venlo, and Antwerp, and when the Northern commander of Antwerp bombarded the town, claiming a breach of a ceasefire, the whole of the Southern provinces was incensed. Any opportunity to quell the breach was lost on 26 September when a National Congress was summoned to draw up a Constitution and the Provisional Government was established under Charles Latour Rogier. A Declaration of Independence followed on 4 October 1830.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: On 20 December 1830 the London Conference of 1830 brought together five major European powers: Austria, the United Kingdom, France, Prussia and Russia. At first, the European powers were divided over the Belgian cry for independence. The Napoleonic Wars were still fresh in the memories of the major European powers, so once the French, under the recently installed July Monarchy, supported Belgian independence, the other European powers unsurprisingly supported the continued union of the Provinces of the Netherlands. Russia, Prussia, Austria, and the United Kingdom all supported the Netherlands, since they feared that the French would eventually annex an independent Belgium (particularly the British: see Flahaut partition plan for Belgium). However, in the end, none of the European powers sent troops to aid the Dutch government, partly because of rebellions within some of their own borders (the Russians were occupied with the November Uprising in Poland and Prussia was saddled with war debt). Britain would come to see the benefits of isolating France geographically with the new creation of a new Belgian buffer state between France, the Netherlands and Prussia. It was for that reason that Britain would eventually sponsor the creation of Belgium.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: In November 1830, the National Congress of Belgium was established to create a constitution for the new state. The Congress decided that Belgium would be a popular, constitutional monarchy. On 7 February 1831, the Belgian Constitution was proclaimed. However, no actual monarch yet sat on the throne.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: The Congress refused to consider any candidate from the Dutch ruling house of Orange-Nassau. Eventually the Congress drew up a shortlist of three candidates, all of whom were French. This itself led to political opposition, and Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who had been considered at an early stage but dropped due to French opposition, was proposed again. On 22 April 1831, Leopold was approached by a Belgian delegation at Marlborough House to officially offer him the throne. At first reluctant to accept, he eventually took up the offer, and after an enthusiastic popular welcome on his way to Brussels, Leopold I of Belgium took his oath as king on 21 July 1831.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: 21 July is generally used to mark the end of the revolution and the start of the Kingdom of Belgium. It is celebrated each year as Belgian National Day.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: King William was not satisfied with the settlement drawn up in London and did not accept Belgium's claim of independence: it divided his kingdom and drastically affected his Treasury. From 2–12 August 1831 the Dutch army, headed by the Dutch princes, invaded Belgium, in the so-called "Ten Days' Campaign", and defeated a makeshift Belgian force near Hasselt and Leuven. Only the appearance of a French army under Marshal Gérard caused the Dutch to stop their advance. While the victorious initial campaign gave the Dutch an advantageous position in subsequent negotiations, the Dutch were compelled to agree to an indefinite armistice, although they continued to hold the Antwerp Citadel and occasionally bombarded the city until French forces forced them out in December 1832. William I would refuse to recognize a Belgian state until April 1839, when he had to yield under pressure by the Treaty of London and reluctantly recognized a border which, with the exception of Limburg and Luxembourg, was basically the border of 1790.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: On 19 April 1839 the Treaty of London signed by the European powers (including the Netherlands) recognized Belgium as an independent and neutral country comprising West Flanders, East Flanders, Brabant, Antwerp, Hainaut, Namur, and Liège, as well as half of Luxembourg and Limburg. The Dutch army, however, held onto Maastricht, and as a result, the Netherlands kept the eastern half of Limburg and its large coalfields.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: Germany broke the treaty in 1914 when it invaded Belgium and dismissed British protests over a "scrap of paper".


title: Belgian Revolution

text: As early as 1830 a movement started for the reunification of Belgium and the Netherlands, called Orangism (after the Dutch royal color of orange), which was active in Flanders and Brussels. But industrial cities, like Liège, also had a strong Orangist faction. The movement met with strong disapproval from the authorities. Between 1831 and 1834, 32 incidents of violence against Orangists were mentioned in the press and in 1834 Minister of Justice Lebeau banned expressions of Orangism in the public sphere, enforced with heavy penalties.


title: Belgian Revolution

text: In 2005, the Belgian revolution of 1830 was depicted in one of the highest value Belgian coins ever minted, the 100 euro "175 Years of Belgium" coin. The obverse depicts a detail from Wappers' painting "Scene of the September Days in 1830".


title: NodeMCU

text: NodeMCU is a low-cost open source IoT platform. It initially included firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi SoC from Espressif Systems, and hardware which was based on the ESP-12 module. Later, support for the ESP32 32-bit MCU was added.


title: NodeMCU

text: NodeMCU is an open source firmware for which open source prototyping board designs are available. The name "NodeMCU" combines "node" and "MCU" (micro-controller unit). Strictly speaking, the term "NodeMCU" refers to the firmware rather than the associated development kits.


title: NodeMCU

text: The firmware uses the Lua scripting language. The firmware is based on the eLua project, and built on the Espressif Non-OS SDK for ESP8266. It uses many open source projects, such as lua-cjson and SPIFFS. Due to resource constraints, users need to select the modules relevant for their project and build a firmware tailored to their needs. Support for the 32-bit ESP32 has also been implemented.


title: NodeMCU

text: The prototyping hardware typically used is a circuit board functioning as a dual in-line package (DIP) which integrates a USB controller with a smaller surface-mounted board containing the MCU and antenna. The choice of the DIP format allows for easy prototyping on breadboards. The design was initially based on the ESP-12 module of the ESP8266, which is a Wi-Fi SoC integrated with a Tensilica Xtensa LX106 core, widely used in IoT applications (see related projects).


title: NodeMCU

text: There are two available versions of NodeMCU as version 0.9 & 1.0 where the version 0.9 contains ESP-12 and version 1.0 contains ESP-12E where E stands for "Enhanced".


title: NodeMCU

text: NodeMCU was created shortly after the ESP8266 came out. On December 30, 2013, Espressif Systems began production of the ESP8266. NodeMCU started on 13 Oct 2014, when Hong committed the first file of nodemcu-firmware to GitHub. Two months later, the project expanded to include an open-hardware platform when developer Huang R committed the gerber file of an ESP8266 board, named devkit v0.9. Later that month, Tuan PM ported MQTT client library from Contiki to the ESP8266 SoC platform, and committed to NodeMCU project, then NodeMCU was able to support the MQTT IoT protocol, using Lua to access the MQTT broker. Another important update was made on 30 Jan 2015, when Devsaurus ported the u8glib to the NodeMCU project, enabling NodeMCU to easily drive LCD, Screen, OLED, even VGA displays.


title: NodeMCU

text: In the summer of 2015 the original creators abandoned the firmware project and a group of independent contributors took over. By the summer of 2016 the NodeMCU included more than 40 different modules.


title: NodeMCU

text: As Arduino.cc began developing new MCU boards based on non-AVR processors like the ARM/SAM MCU used in the Arduino Due, they needed to modify the Arduino IDE so it would be relatively easy to change the IDE to support alternate toolchains to allow Arduino C/C++ to be compiled for these new processors. They did this with the introduction of the Board Manager and the SAM Core. A "core" is the collection of software components required by the Board Manager and the Arduino IDE to compile an Arduino C/C++ source file for the target MCU's machine language. Some ESP8266 enthusiasts developed an Arduino core for the ESP8266 WiFi SoC, popularly called the "ESP8266 Core for the Arduino IDE". This has become a leading software development platform for the various ESP8266-based modules and development boards, including NodeMCUs.


title: NodeMCU

text: NodeMCU provides access to the GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) and a pin mapping table is part of the API documentation.


title: NodeMCU

text: [*] D0 (GPIO16) can only be used for GPIO read/write. It does not support open-drain/interrupt/PWM/I²C or 1-Wire.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The extant manuscripts of the book "Antiquities of the Jews", written by the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus around AD 93–94, contain two references to Jesus of Nazareth and one reference to John the Baptist.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The first and most extensive reference to Jesus in the "Antiquities", found in , states that Jesus was the Messiah and a wise teacher who was crucified by Pontius Pilate. It is commonly called the "Testimonium Flavianum". Almost all modern scholars reject the authenticity of this passage in its present form, while most scholars nevertheless hold that it contains an authentic nucleus referencing the life and execution of Jesus by Pilate, which was then subject to Christian interpolation or alteration. However, the exact nature and extent of the Christian addition remains unclear.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Modern scholarship has largely acknowledged the authenticity of the second reference to Jesus in the "Antiquities", found in , which mentions "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James." This reference is considered to be more authentic than the "Testimonium".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Almost all modern scholars consider the reference in of the "Antiquities" to the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist also to be authentic and not a Christian interpolation. A number of differences exist between the statements by Josephus regarding the death of John the Baptist and the New Testament accounts. Scholars generally view these variations as indications that the Josephus passages are not interpolations, since a Christian interpolator would likely have made them correspond to the New Testament accounts, not differ from them. Scholars have provided explanations for their inclusion in Josephus' later works.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Josephus wrote all of his surviving works after his establishment in Rome () under the patronage of the Flavian Emperor Vespasian. As is common with ancient texts, however, there are no known manuscripts of Josephus' works that can be dated before the 11th century, and the oldest which do survive were copied by Christian monks. Jews are not known to have preserved the writings of Josephus perhaps because he was considered a traitor, and/or because his works circulated in Greek, the use of which declined among Jews shortly after Josephus' era.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: There are about 120 extant Greek manuscripts of Josephus, of which 33 predate the 14th century, with two thirds from the Komnenos period. The earliest surviving Greek manuscript that contains the "Testimonium" is the 11th century Ambrosianus 370 (F 128), preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, which includes almost all of the second half of the "Antiquities". There are about 170 extant Latin translations of Josephus, some of which go back to the sixth century. According to Louis Feldman these have proven very useful in reconstructing the Josephus texts through comparisons with the Greek manuscripts, confirming proper names and filling in gaps. One of the reasons the works of Josephus were copied and maintained by Christians was that his writings provided a good deal of information about a number of figures mentioned in the New Testament, and the background to events such as the death of James during a gap in Roman governing authority.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The three references found in and of the "Antiquities" do not appear in any other versions of Josephus' "The Jewish War" except for a Slavonic version of the "Testimonium Flavianum" (at times called "Testimonium Slavonium") which surfaced in the west at the beginning of the 20th century, after its discovery in Russia at the end of the 19th century.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Although originally hailed as authentic (notably by Robert Eisler), it is now almost universally acknowledged by scholars to have been the product of an 11th-century creation as part of a larger ideological struggle against the Khazars. As a result, it has little place in the ongoing debate over the authenticity and nature of the references to Jesus in the "Antiquities." Craig A. Evans states that although some scholars had in the past supported the "Slavonic Josephus", "to my knowledge no one today believes that they contain anything of value for Jesus research".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In 1971, a 10th-century Arabic version of the "Testimonium" from the chronicle of Agapius of Hierapolis was brought to light by Shlomo Pines, who also discovered a 12th-century Syriac version of the "Testimonium" in the chronicle of Michael the Syrian. These additional manuscript sources of the "Testimonium" have furnished additional ways to evaluate Josephus' mention of Jesus in the "Antiquities", principally through a close textual comparison between the Arabic, Syriac and Greek versions to the "Testimonium".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: There are subtle yet key differences between the Greek manuscripts and these texts. For instance, the Arabic version does not blame the Jews for the death of Jesus. The key phrase "at the suggestion of the principal men among us" reads instead "Pilate condemned him to be crucified". Instead of "he was Christ", the Syriac version has the phrase "he was believed to be Christ". Drawing on these textual variations, scholars have suggested that these versions of the "Testimonium" more closely reflect what a non-Christian Jew might have written.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In 2008, however, Alice Whealey published an article arguing that Agapius' and Michael's versions of the "Testimonium" are not independent witnesses to the original text of Josephus' "Antiquities". Rather, they both ultimately derive from the Syriac translation of the "Church History" written by Eusebius, which in turn quotes the "Testimonium". Whealey notes that Michael's Syriac "Testimonium" shares several peculiar choices of vocabulary with the version found in the Syriac translation of the "Church History". These words and phrases are not shared by an independent Syriac translation of the "Testimonium" from Eusebius' book "Theophania", strongly indicating that Agapius's text is simply a paraphrased quotation from the Syriac "Church History", and not a direct quotation of Josephus himself. Michael's text, in contrast, she concludes is much closer to what Josephus actually wrote.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: One of the key prongs in her argument is that Agapius' and Michael's "Testimonia" share the unique peculiarity that they both explicitly state that Jesus died after being condemned to the cross, while the Greek original does not include this detail. According to Whealey, the differences between the two "Testimonia" are simply due to the fact that Agapius' chronicle more freely paraphrases and abbreviates its sources, whereas Michael's version is probably a "verbatim" copy. The implication of this argument, if valid, is that Agapius' abbreviated "Testimonium" cannot be an earlier version of the passage than what we find in extant manuscripts of Josephus' "Antiquities".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Whealey furthermore notices that Michael's version of the "Testimonium" shares common features with Jerome's Latin translation. Most importantly for her, instead of ""he was the Messiah,"" as in the Greek "Testimonium", Jerome's and Michael's versions both read, ""he was thought to be the Messiah."" She considers it likely, therefore, that the Latin and Arabic translations go back to an original Greek version with the same reading. Since they otherwise have no substantial disagreement from the Greek version we possess, and since that sole variant is sufficient to explain the most powerful objections to the "Testimonium's" integrity, she concludes that it is "the only major alteration" that has been made to what Josephus originally wrote.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The "Testimonium Flavianum" (meaning the testimony of Flavius Josephus) is a passage found in (or see Greek text) of the "Antiquities" which describes the condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of the Roman authorities. The "Testimonium" is probably the most discussed passage in Josephus.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The earliest secure reference to this passage is found in the writings of the fourth-century Christian apologist and historian Eusebius, who used Josephus' works extensively as a source for his own "Historia Ecclesiastica". Writing no later than 324, Eusebius quotes the passage in essentially the same form as that preserved in extant manuscripts. It has therefore been suggested by a minority of scholars that part or all of the passage may have been Eusebius' own invention, in order to provide an outside Jewish authority for the life of Christ. Some argue that the wording in the Testimonium differs from Josephus' usual writing style and that as a Jew, he would not have used a word like Christos (Χριστός), at Josephus' time being the Greek term for "Messiah". See also the arguments for authenticity in the sections below.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Of the three passages found in Josephus' Antiquities, this passage, if authentic, would offer the most direct support for the crucifixion of Jesus. It is broadly agreed that while the Testimonium Flavianum cannot be authentic in its entirety, it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate which was then subject to interpolation. James Dunn states that there is "broad consensus" among scholars regarding the nature of an authentic reference to Jesus in the "Testimonium" and what the passage would look like without the interpolations. Among other things, the authenticity of this passage would help make sense of the later reference in Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews" where Josephus refers to the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Paul L. Maier and Zvi Baras state that there are three possible perspectives on the authenticity of the "Testimonium":


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Paul Maier states that the first case is generally seen as hopeless given that as a Jew, Josephus would not have claimed Jesus as the Messiah, and that the second option is hardly tenable given the presence of the passage in all extant Greek manuscripts; thus a large majority of modern scholars accept the third alternative, i.e., partial authenticity. Baras adds that the third position is more plausible because it accepts parts of the passage as genuine, but discounts other parts as interpolations. Craig Evans (and separately Robert Van Voorst) state that most modern scholars accept the position that the "Testimonium" is partially authentic, had a kernel with an authentic reference to Jesus, and that the analysis of its content and style support this conclusion.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: While before the advent of literary criticism most scholars considered the "Testimonium" entirely authentic, thereafter the number of supporters of full authenticity declined. However, most scholars now accept partial authenticity and many attempt to reconstruct their own version of the authentic kernel, and scholars such as Geza Vermes have argued that the overall characterizations of Jesus in the "Testimonium" are in accord with the style and approach of Josephus.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Until the rise of modern criticism, many scholars believed the "Testimonium" was nearly or completely authentic with little or no Christian interpolations. Some of these arguments relied on the language used in the "Testimonium". For instance, Jesus is called "a wise man" (and Josephus described others like Solomon, Daniel, and John the Baptist in the same fashion), which would not have been a common Christian label for Christ at the time. He referred to Jesus merely as "a worker of amazing deeds" and nothing more, again disagreeing with how Christians viewed Christ. Referring to Jesus as "a teacher of people who accept the truth with pleasure", where "pleasure" (ἡδονή) connotes hedonistic value, is not in line with how Christians saw the point of Jesus' teachings. Claiming that Jesus won over "both Jews and Greeks" is a misunderstanding that a Christian scribe would not likely have made, knowing that Jesus mainly ministered to Jews. Also, the phrase "Those who had first loved him did not cease doing so" is Josephan in style, and calling Christians a "tribe" would not have made sense to a Christian writer.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The "paraphrase model", advanced by G. J. Goldberg in 2022, is based on the observation that Josephus wrote most of the "Jewish Antiquities" by paraphrasing Greek and Hebrew sources. Goldberg proposes that the Jesus passage in the "Antiquities" is also a paraphrase in the same manner. Josephus’s methods of revising his sources have been well established and can be used to objectively test whether a proposed candidate source can have been adapted in the same way for the Jesus passage. In a phrase-by-phrase study, Goldberg finds that the Jesus account can be derived from Luke’s Emmaus narrative using transformations Josephus is demonstrated to have employed in paraphrasing known sources for the "Antiquities". He finds these paraphrase precedents in word adoption, word and phrase substitution, content order preservation and content modification. As these stylistic pairings are unlike the relationships found among any other ancient Jesus texts, Goldberg proposes the most plausible explanation of these findings is that the Jesus passage in the "Antiquities" is indeed Josephus’s paraphrase of a Christian text very much like, if not identical to, Luke’s Emmaus narrative (Luke 24:18–24).


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: This paraphrase model, Goldberg argues, is not only a natural application of Josephus’s writing processes but also resolves the questions that researchers have raised about the passage, shedding light on the origin of specific difficult phrases and accounting for its brevity and its mixture of Josephan language with a Christian creedal structure. While many had previously suspected that an original Josephus passage had been edited by a later Christian to give the creedal appearance, the paraphrase model argues such edits cannot explain the end-to-end consistency of a paraphrase relationship with the Emmaus text. The more plausible explanation is rather the reverse: an original Christian document was edited by Josephus by applying his usual revision method for the "Antiquities".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The historical implications of the model, Goldberg argues, include the following. First, it shows Jesus was a historical figure and not a myth, based on the reasoning that Josephus’s treatment of his source indicates he thought it reliable; it must have conformed with what he knew of events under Pilate. The model also provides unique evidence about the dating of at least one passage of Luke’s Gospel. And as the paraphrase shows Josephus had obtained a Christian source and treated it with a degree of respect, it provides an unexpected window into a cordial relationship between Christians and Jews in Rome at the end of the first century.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The "Testimonium" has been the subject of a great deal of research and debate among scholars, being one of the most discussed passages among all antiquities. Louis Feldman has stated that in the period from 1937 to 1980 at least 87 articles had appeared on the topic, the overwhelming majority of which questioned the total or partial authenticity of the "Testimonium". While early scholars considered the "Testimonium" to be a total forgery, the majority of modern scholars consider it partially authentic, despite some clear Christian interpolations in the text.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The arguments surrounding the authenticity of the "Testimonium" fall into two categories: internal arguments that rely on textual analysis and compare the passage with the rest of Josephus' work; and external arguments, that consider the wider cultural and historical context. Some of the external arguments are "arguments from silence" that question the authenticity of the entire passage not for what it says, but due to lack of references to it among other ancient sources.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The external analyses of the "Testimonium" have even used computer-based methods, e.g. the matching of the text of the "Testimonium" with the Gospel of Luke performed by Gary Goldberg in 1995. Goldberg found some partial matches between the "Testimonium" and Luke 24:19–21, 26–27 stating "the Emmaus narrative more closely resembles the Testimonium in its phrase-by-phrase outline of content and order than any other known text of comparable age." Goldberg's analyses suggested three possibilities: that the matches were random, that the "Testimonium" was a Christian interpolation based on Luke, or that both the "Testimonium" and Luke were based on the same sources. In a later work, published in 2022, Goldberg investigated Josephus's paraphrase style and concluded only the last of these possibilities could explain why the Emmaus-Testimonium language relationships were end-to-end consistent with Josephus's methods of revision.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: One of the key internal arguments against the complete authenticity of the "Testimonium" is that the clear inclusion of Christian phraseology strongly indicates the presence of some interpolations. For instance, the phrases "if it be lawful to call him a man" suggests that Jesus was more than human and is likely a Christian interpolation. Some scholars have attempted to reconstruct the original "Testimonium", but others contend that attempts to discriminate the passage into Josephan and non-Josephan elements are inherently circular.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Another example of the textual arguments against the "Testimonium" is that it uses the Greek term "poietes" to mean "doer" (as part of the phrase "doer of wonderful works") but elsewhere in his works, Josephus only uses the term "poietes" to mean "poet," whereas this use of "poietes" seems consistent with the Greek of Eusebius.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: According to Wataru Mizugaki, Origen explicitly mentions the name of Josephus 11 times, never mentioning the "Testimonium", both in Greek and Latin. Furthermore, Origen's statement in his "Commentary on Matthew" () that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ", is usually seen as a confirmation of the generally accepted fact that Josephus did not believe Jesus to be the Messiah. This forms a key external argument against the total authenticity of the "Testimonium" in that Josephus, as a Jew, would not have claimed Jesus as the Messiah, and the reference to "he was the Christ" in the "Testimonium" must be a Christian interpolation. Based on this observation alone, Paul L. Maier calls the case for the total authenticity of the "Testimonium" "hopeless". Almost all modern scholars reject the total authenticity of the "Testimonium", while the majority of scholars still hold that it includes an authentic kernel.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: A different set of external arguments against the authenticity of the "Testimonium" (either partial or total) are "arguments from silence", e.g. that although twelve Christian authors refer to Josephus before Eusebius in AD 324, none mentions the "Testimonium".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Even after Eusebius' AD 324 reference, it is not until Jerome's "De Viris Illustribus" () that the passage from Josephus is referenced again, even though the "Testimonium"'s reference to Jesus would seem appropriate in the works of many intervening patristic authors. However, Bart D. Ehrman and John P. Meier have argued that this silence is mainly due to the fact that the original "Testimonium" probably had a neutral tone toward Jesus and did not contain elements that would have been useful to Christian apologetics, since it did not recognize him as the Messiah, nor did it speak about his resurrection; it was, therefore, not a useful instrument in their polemics with Pagan writers.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Some scholars also point to the silence of Photios as late as the 9th century, and the fact that he does not mention the "Testimonium" at all in his broad review of Josephus. However, Photios argues in his "Bibliotheca" that Josephus's works mention the Massacre of the Innocents and the virgin birth of Jesus (which no works of Josephus make any reference to), leading many scholars to think that he actually had a scant knowledge of the writings he was reviewing or that the documents he was working on were grossly interpolated. Also, Photios had clearly read Eusebius's "Church History" and Jerome's "De Viris Illustribus", since he lists them both in his "Bibliotheca".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: A separate argument from silence against the total or partial authenticity of the "Testimonium" is that a 5th- or 6th-century table of contents of Josephus (albeit selective) makes no mention of it.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Andreas Köstenberger argues that the fact that the 10th-century Arabic version of the "Testimonium" (discovered in the 1970s) lacks distinct Christian terminology while sharing the essential elements of the passage indicates that the Greek "Testimonium" has been subject to interpolation.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: A final argument from silence relates to Josephus' own writings and questions the authenticity of "Testimonium" based on the fact that it has no parallel in the "Jewish War", which includes a discussion of Pontius Pilate at about the same level of detail.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Zvi Baras believes that the "Testimonium" was subject to interpolation before Eusebius wrote. Baras believes that Origen had seen the original "Testimonium" but that the "Testimonium" seen by Origen had no negative reference to Jesus, else Origen would have reacted against it. Baras states that the interpolation in the "Testimonium" took place between Origen and Eusebius.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Paul L. Maier states that a comparison of Eusebius' reference with the 10th-century Arabic version of the "Testimonium" due to Agapius of Hierapolis indicates that the Christian interpolation present in the "Testimonium" must have come early, before Eusebius. Robert E. Van Voorst also states that the interpolation likely took place some time between Origen and Eusebius.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Craig Evans states that an argument in favor of the partial authenticity of the "Testimonium" is that the passage does not stress the role played by the Jewish leaders in the death of Jesus. According to Evans, if the passage had been an interpolation after the emergence of conflicts between Jews and Christians, it would have had a more accusatory tone, but in its current form reads as one would expect it to read for a passage composed by Josephus towards the end of the first century. Geza Vermes concurs, arguing that if the "Testimonium" had been the work of a Christian forger, it would have placed blame on the Jewish leaders, but as is it is "perfectly in line" with the attitude of Josephus towards Pilate. Vermes also states that the detached depiction of the followers of Jesus is not the work of a Christian interpolator. Vermes calls the Jesus notice in the "Testimonium" a "veritable tour de force" in which Josephus plays the role of a neutral witness.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Andreas Köstenberger argues that the "Testimonium" includes vocabulary that is typically Josephan, and the style is consistent with that of Josephus. Köstenberger (and separately Van Voorst) state that the Josephus' reference to the large number of followers of Jesus during his public ministry is unlikely to have been due to a Christian scribe familiar with the New Testament accounts, and is hence unlikely to be an interpolation.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Claudia Setzer holds that while "tribe is an odd way to describe Christians," it does not necessarily have negative connotations. Setzer argues for the existence of an authentic kernel because "the style and vocabulary are Josephan" and specific parts (e.g. the use of "wise man") are not what one would expect from a Christian forger. Setzer argues that the Testimonium indicates that Josephus had heard of Jesus and the basic elements surrounding his death, and that he saw Jesus as primarily a miracle worker. Van Voorst also states that calling Christians a "tribe" would have been very out of character for a Christian scribe, while Josephus has used it to refer both to Jewish and Christian groups.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Lester L. Grabbe notes that in two works ("Commentary on Matthew" 10.17 and "Contra Celsum" 1.47; see ) Origen had actually complained that Josephus had mentioned Jesus, while not recognizing Jesus as the messiah, and this provided an early independent support of the partial Testimonium in a more neutral form. Zvi Baras argues from this that Origen had seen a version of the "Testimonium" that included no interpolations. Baras asserts that a "Testimonium" seen by Origen must have had a neutral tone, and included no derogatory references towards Christians, and hence required no reaction from Origen. He claims that the neutral tone of the "Testimonium" was then modified between the time of Origen and Eusebius. John P. Meier similarly argues that the fact that Origen complains that Josephus had not recognized Jesus as the Messiah points to the fact that Origen had read the original version of the "Testimonium", since such a clear statement could not have simply arisen from the "James, brother of Jesus" passage.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Andreas Köstenberger argues that a comparison of the Greek manuscripts with the Arabic quotation discovered by Shlomo Pines in the 1970s provides an indication of the original Josephan text. Köstenberger states that many modern scholars believe that the Arabic version reflects the state of Josephus' original text before it was subject to Christian interpolation.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Steve Mason has argued for partial authenticity for the "Testimonium" because no other parts of any of the works of Josephus have been contested to have had scribal tempering, Christian copyists were usually conservative when transmitting texts in general, and seeing that the works of Philo were unaltered by Christian scribes through the centuries strongly support that it is very unlikely that the passage was invented out of thin air by a Christian scribe. Philo often wrote in a way that was favorable to Christian ideas and yet no Christian scribes took advantage of that to insert Jesus or Christian beliefs into Philo's text.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Chilton and Evans state that the general acceptance of the authenticity of the James passage lends support to the partial authenticity of the "Testimonium" in that the brief reference to "Jesus, who was called Christ" in "Antiquities" "clearly implies a prior reference" and that "in all probability the "Testimonium" is that prior reference". Paul L. Maier concurs with the analysis of Chilton and Evans and states that Josephus' first reference was the "Testimonium". Geza Vermes also considers the "who was called Christ" reference in the James passage as the second reference to Jesus in the "Antiquities" and states that the first reference is likely to be the "Testimonium".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Robert Van Voorst states that most modern scholars believe that the "Testimonium" is partially authentic, and has a reference to Jesus. However, he states that scholars are divided on the tone of the original reference and while some scholars believe that it had a negative tone which was softened by Christian interpolators, others believe that it had a neutral tone, in keeping with the style and approach of Josephus regarding the issue. According to Van Voorst, scholars who support the negative reconstruction contend that the reference read something like "source of further trouble in Jesus a wise man" and that it stated "he was the so-called Christ". Van Voorst states that most scholars support a neutral reconstruction which states "Around this time lived Jesus, a wise man" and includes no reference to "he was the Christ". Van Voorst states that if the original references to Jesus had had a negative tone, the Christian scribes would have likely deleted it entirely. Van Voorst also states that the neutral reconstruction fits better with the Arabic "Testimonium" discovered by Pines in the 1970s. Van Voorst states that the neutral reconstruction is supported by the majority of scholars because it involves far less conjectural wording and fits better with the style of Josephus.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Craig Blomberg states that if the three elements "lawful to call him a man", "he was the Christ" and the reference to the resurrection are removed from the "Testimonium" the rest of the passage flows smoothly within the context, fits the style of Josephus and is likely to be authentic. Blomberg adds that after the removal of these three elements (which are likely interpolations) from the Greek versions the remaining passage fits well with the Arabic version and supports the authenticity of the reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate. Joel B. Green also states that the removal of some elements from the "Testimonium" produces a passage that is likely to be an authentic reference to the death of Jesus.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In the estimation of James Dunn, there is "broad consensus" among scholars regarding what the "Testimonium" would look like without the interpolations. According to Dunn's reconstruction, the original passage likely read:


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In this passage, which is based on John P. Meier's reconstruction, Jesus is called a "wise man", but "lawful to call him a man" and "he was the Christ" are removed, as is the reference to the resurrection. According to Bart D. Ehrman, Meier's reconstruction is currently the most accepted among scholars.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Geza Vermes has performed a detailed analysis of the "Testimonium" and modified it to remove what he considers the interpolations. In Vermes' reconstruction "there was Jesus, a wise man" is retained, but the reference to "he was the Christ" is changed to "he was called the Christ" and the resurrection reference is omitted. Vermes states that the "Testimonium" provides Josephus' authentic portrayal of Jesus, depicting him as a wise teacher and miracle worker with an enthusiastic group of followers who remained faithful to him after his crucifixion by Pilate, up to the time of Josephus. Vermes's version reads:Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. He was called the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In addition to the arguments listed above, a minority of scholars have put forward arguments to the effect that the entire "Testimonium" is a Christian interpolation. For example, Kenneth Olson has argued that the entire "Testimonium" must have been forged by Eusebius himself, basing his argument on textual similarities between the "Testimonium" and Eusebius' writings in the "Demonstrations of the Gospels".


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In 2012, Josephus scholar Louis Feldman reversed his prior support for the partial authenticity of the "Testimonium", proposing that the passage was interpolated in its entirety by Eusebius. In support of this view, Feldman points out, following Olson, that the "Testimonium" features three phrases ('one who wrought surprising feats,' 'the tribe of the Christians,' and 'still to this day') which are used no where else in the whole of Greek literature except Eusebius. Feldman's new theory was criticized by James Carleton Paget, who accused Feldman of misreading the data and of using anachronistic criteria.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Both Carleton Paget and Alice Whealey had already responded to Olson's argument, rejecting its arguments and conclusion. In his 2000 book Van Voorst had also argued that the word "tribe" is actually used by Josephus to describe other Jewish groups, while Geza Vermes argued in 2009 that the expression "surprising feats" ("paradoxon ergon") is repeatedly used by Josephus in his works to describe many miracles associated with the Old Testament (such as the burning bush and the miracles of Moses and Elisha).


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In 2014, Carnegie Mellon linguistics professor Paul Hopper wrote a book chapter in which he argued that the style and narrative structure of the "Testimonium" is sharply in contrast with the rest of Josephus' work. According to Hopper, the language of the "Testimonium" has more in common with fourth-century Christian creedal statements than the historiographical work of first-century authors, including Josephus. He concluded that the most likely explanation is that the passage was simply interpolated in its entirety by a Christian scribe.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The concordance of the language used in the "Testimonium", its flow within the text, and its length have formed components of the internal arguments against its authenticity, e.g. that the brief and compact character of the "Testimonium" stands in marked contrast to Josephus' more extensive accounts presented elsewhere in his works. For example, Josephus' description of the death of John the Baptist includes consideration of his virtues, the theology associated with his baptismal practices, his oratorical skills, his influence, the circumstances of his death, and the belief that the destruction of Herod's army was a divine punishment for Herod's slaughter of John. G. A. Wells has argued against the authenticity of the "Testimonium", stating that the passage is noticeably shorter and more cursory than such notices generally used by Josephus in the "Antiquities", and that had it been authentic, it would have included more details and a longer introduction.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: A further internal argument against the "Testimonium's" authenticity is the context of the passage in the "Antiquities of the Jews". Some scholars argue that the passage is an intrusion into the progression of Josephus' text at the point in which it appears in the "Antiquities" and breaks the thread of the narrative.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In the "Antiquities of the Jews" () Josephus refers to the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus" (James the Just) by order of Ananus ben Ananus, a Herodian-era High Priest. The James referred to in this passage is most likely the James to whom the "Epistle of James" has been attributed. The translations of Josephus' writing into other languages have at times included passages that are not found in the Greek texts, raising the possibility of interpolation, but this passage on James is found in all manuscripts, including the Greek texts.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The context of the passage is the period following the death of Porcius Festus, and the journey to Alexandria by Lucceius Albinus, the new Roman Procurator of Judea, who held that position from AD 62 to 64. Because Albinus' journey to Alexandria had to have concluded no later than the summer of AD 62, the date of James' death can be assigned with some certainty to around that year. The 2nd century chronicler Hegesippus also left an account of the death of James, and while the details he provides diverge from those of Josephus, the two accounts share similar elements.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledged the authenticity of the reference to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" (τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ) and has rejected its being the result of later Christian interpolation. Moreover, in comparison with Hegesippus' account of James' death, most scholars consider Josephus' to be the more historically reliable. However, a few scholars question the authenticity of the reference, based on various arguments, but primarily based on the observation that various details in "The Jewish War" differ from it.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In the 3rd century, Origen of Alexandria claimed in two works that Josephus had mentioned James, the brother of Jesus. In Origen's commentary on Matthew, he writes:


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Many commentators have concluded that Origen is making reference to the "James, the brother of Jesus" passage found in "Antiquities", Book 20 here, but there are some problems with this view. Origen is attributing statements to Josephus that he never wrote in any of his extant works (such as the claim that the killing of James caused the destruction of the Jerusalem temple), suggesting that he is at least partially confused.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In of his "Church History", Eusebius mentions Josephus' reference to the death of James. Eusebius attributes the following quote to Josephus: “These things happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus, that is called the Christ. For the Jews slew him, although he was a most just man.” However, this statement does not appear in the extant manuscripts of Josephus. Moreover, in Book III, ch. 11 of his "Church History" Eusebius states that the conquest of Jerusalem immediately followed the martyrdom of James setting the martyrdom at rather than the given by Josephus.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Louis Feldman states that the authenticity of the Josephus passage on James has been "almost universally acknowledged." Feldman states that this passage, above others, indicates that Josephus did say something about Jesus. Feldman states that it would make no sense for Origen to show amazement that Josephus did not acknowledge Jesus as Christ (), if Josephus had not referred to Jesus at all. Paul L. Maier states that most scholars agree with Feldman's assessment that "few have doubted the genuineness of this passage" Zvi Baras also states that most modern scholars consider the James passage to be authentic.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: According to Robert E. Van Voorst the overwhelming majority of scholars consider both the reference to "the brother of Jesus called Christ" and the entire passage that includes it as authentic. Van Voorst states that the James passage fits well in the context in the "Antiquities" and an indication for its authenticity is the lack of the laudatory language that a Christian interpolator would have used to refer to Jesus as "the Lord", or a similar term. Van Voorst also states that the use of a neutral term "called Christ" which neither denies nor affirms Jesus as the Messiah points to authenticity, and indicates that Josephus used it to distinguish Jesus from the many other people called Jesus at the time, in the same way that James is distinguished, given that it was also a common name.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Richard Bauckham states that although a few scholars have questioned the James passage, "the vast majority have considered it to be authentic", and that among the several accounts of the death of James the account in Josephus is generally considered to be historically the most reliable. Bauckham states that the method of killing James by stoning, and the description provided by Josephus via the assembly of the Sanhedrin of judges are consistent with the policies of the Temple authorities towards the early Christian Church at the time.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Andreas Köstenberger considers the James passage to be authentic and states that the James passage attests to the existence of Jesus as a historical person, and that his followers considered him the Messiah.(Köstenberger pages 104–5) Köstenberger states that the statement by Josephus that some people recognized Jesus as the Messiah is consistent with the grammar of Josephus elsewhere but does not imply that Josephus himself considered Jesus the Messiah.(Köstenberger pages 104–5) Köstenberger concurs with John Meier that it is highly unlikely for the passage to be a Christian interpolation given that in New Testament texts James is referred to as the "brother of the Lord" rather than the "brother of Jesus", and that a Christian interpolator would have provided a more detailed account at that point.(Köstenberger pages 104–5)


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Claudia Setzer states that few have questioned the authenticity of the James passage, partly based on the observation that a Christian interpolator would have provided more praise for James. Setzer states that the passage indicates that Josephus, a Jewish historian writing towards the end of the first century, could use a neutral tone towards Christians, with some tones of sympathy, implying that they may be worthy of Roman protection.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: John Painter states that nothing in the James passage looks suspiciously like a Christian interpolation and that the account can be accepted as historical.(Painter pages 139–42). Painter discusses the role of Ananus and the background to the passage, and states that after being deposed as High Priest for killing James and being replaced by Jesus the son of Damnaeus, Ananus had maintained his influence within Jerusalem through bribery.(Painter page 136) Painter points out that as described in the Antiquities of the Jews () Ananus was bribing both Albinus and Jesus the son of Damnaeus so that his men could take the tithes of other priests outside Jerusalem, to the point that some priests then starved to death.(Painter pages 139–42). Philip Carrington states that there is no reason to question the authenticity of the Josephus passage on James, and elaborates the background by stating that Ananus continued to remain a power within the Jewish circles at the time even after being deposed, and that it is likely that the charges brought against James by Ananus were not only because of his Christian association but because he objected to the oppressive policies against the poor; hence explaining the later indignation of the more moderate Jewish leaders.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: A comparative argument made against the authenticity of the James passage by scholars such as Tessa Rajak is that the passage has a negative tone regarding the High Priest Ananus, presenting him as impulsive while in the "Jewish Wars" Josephus presents a positive view of Ananus and portrays him as prudent.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: A textual argument against the authenticity of the James passage is that the use of the term "Christos" there seems unusual for Josephus. An argument based on the flow of the text in the document is that given that the mention of Jesus appears in the "Antiquities" before that of the John the Baptist a Christian interpolator may have inserted it to place Jesus in the text before John. A further argument against the authenticity of the James passage is that it would have read well even without a reference to Jesus.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Josephus's account places the date of the death of James as AD 62. This date is supported by Jerome's 'seventh year of the Emperor Nero', although Jerome may simply be drawing this from Josephus. However, James's successor as leader of the Jerusalem church, Simeon, is not, in tradition, appointed till after the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, and Eusebius's notice of Simeon implies a date for the death of James immediately before the siege, i.e. about AD 69. The method of death of James is not mentioned in the New Testament. However, the account of Josephus differs from that of later works by Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea in that it simply has James stoned while the others have other variations such as having James thrown from the top of the Temple, stoned, and finally beaten to death by a fuller as well as his death occurring during the siege of Jerusalem in AD 69.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: John Painter states that the relationship of the death of James to the siege is an important theologoumenon in the early church. On the basis of the Gospel accounts it was concluded that the fate of the city was determined by the death there of Jesus. To account for the 35 year difference, Painter states that the city was preserved temporarily by the presence within it of a 'just man' (see also Sodom); who was identified with James, as confirmed by Origen. Hence Painter states that the killing of James restarted the clock that led to the destruction of the city and that the traditional dating of AD 69 simply arose from an over-literal application of the theologoumenon, and is not to be regarded as founded on a historical source. The difference between Josephus and the Christian accounts of the death of James is seen as an indication that the Josephus passage is not a Christian interpolation by scholars such as Eddy, Boyd, and Kostenberger. Geza Vermes states that compared to the Christian accounts: "the sober picture of Josephus appears all the more believable". G. A. Wells, on the other hand, has stated that in view of Origen's statements these variations from the Christian accounts may be signs of interpolation in the James passage.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In the "Antiquities of the Jews" () Josephus refers to the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist by order of Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee and Perea. The context of this reference is the AD 36 defeat of Herod Antipas in his conflict with Aretas IV of Nabatea, which the Jews of the time attributed to misfortune brought about by Herod's unjust execution of John.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Almost all modern scholars consider this passage to be authentic in its entirety, although a small number of authors have questioned it. Because the death of John also appears prominently in the Christian gospels, this passage is considered an important connection between the events Josephus recorded, the chronology of the gospels and the dates for the ministry of Jesus. A few scholars have questioned the passage, contending that the absence of Christian tampering or interpolation does not itself prove authenticity. While this passage is the only reference to John the Baptist outside the New Testament, it is widely seen by most scholars as confirming the historicity of the baptisms that John performed. According to Marsh, any contrast between Josephus and the Gospel's accounts of John would be because the former lacked interest in the messianic element of John's mission.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Craig Evans states that almost all modern scholars consider the Josephus passage on John to be authentic in its entirety, and that what Josephus states about John fits well both with the general depiction of John in the New Testament and within the historical context of the activities of other men, their preachings and their promises during that period.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Louis Feldman, who believes the Josephus passage on John is authentic, states that Christian interpolators would have been very unlikely to have devoted almost twice as much space to John (163 words) as to Jesus (89 words). Feldman also states that a Christian interpolator would have likely altered Josephus's passage about John the Baptist to make the circumstances of the death of John become similar to the New Testament, and to indicate that John was a forerunner of Jesus.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: James Dunn states that the accounts of Josephus and the New Testament regarding John the Baptist are closer than they may appear at a first reading. Dunn states that Josephus positions John as a righteous preacher ("dikaiosyne") who encourages his followers to practice "righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God" and that similarly calls John "a righteous ("dikaios") and holy man". Dunn states that Antipas likely saw John as a figure whose ascetic lifestyle and calls for moral reform could provoke a popular uprising on moral grounds, as both Josephus and the New Testament suggest.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Justin Meggitt states that there are fundamental similarities between the Josephus' portrayal of John the Baptist and the New Testament narrative in that in both accounts John is positioned as a preacher of morality, not as someone who had challenged the political authority of Herod Antipas. W. E. Nunnally states that the John passage is considered authentic and that Josephus' emphasis on the egalitarian nature of John's teachings fit well into the biblical and historical traditions.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In Origen's apologetic work "Contra Celsum", made an explicit reference to the Josephus passage discussing John the Baptist:


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Here, Origen provides a clear, unambiguous indication that the passage concerning John the Baptist existed in his early manuscript of "Antiquities of the Jews". This implies that the John the Baptist passage would have had to have been interpolated into the "Antiquities" at quite an early date, before the time of Origen, if it is inauthentic.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: In Eusebius of Caesarea's 4th-century work "Church History" (), Eusebius also discusses the Josephus reference to Herod Antipas's killing of John the Baptist, and mentions the marriage to Herodias in paragraphs 1 to 6.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Rivka Nir argues that the kind of baptism performed by John the Baptist was not considered legitimate in the mainstream Jewish circles to which Josephus belonged, and therefore Josephus could not have described John as positively as he is in "Antiquities", Book 18. Nir therefore concludes that the passage is likely a Christian interpolation.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Claire Rothschild has stated that the absence of Christian interpolations in the Josephus passage on John the Baptist can not by itself be used as an argument for its authenticity, but is merely an indication of the lack of tampering.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: The marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias is mentioned both in Josephus and in the gospels, and scholars consider Josephus as a key connection in establishing the approximate chronology of specific episodes related to John the Baptist. However, although both the gospels and Josephus refer to Herod Antipas killing John the Baptist, they differ on the details and motives, e.g. whether this act was a consequence of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias (as indicated in , ), or a pre-emptive measure by Herod which possibly took place before the marriage to quell a possible uprising based on the remarks of John, as Josephus suggests in . Jean Daniélou contends that Josephus missed the religious meaning while recording only the political aspect of the conflict between Herod and John, which led to the latter's death.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: While Josephus identifies the location of the imprisonment of John as Machaerus, southeast of the mouth of the Jordan river, the gospels mention no location for the place where John was imprisoned. According to other historical accounts Machaerus was rebuilt by Herod the Great around 30 BC and then passed to Herod Antipas. The AD 36 date of the conflict with Aretas IV (mentioned by Josephus) is consistent with the approximate date of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias estimated by other historical methods.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Louis Feldman has stated that there is "no necessary contradiction between Josephus and the gospels as to the reason why John was put to death" in that the Christians chose to emphasize the moral charges while Josephus emphasized the political fears that John stirred in Herod.


title: Josephus on Jesus

text: Josephus stated () that the AD 36 defeat of Herod Antipas in the conflicts with Aretas IV of Nabatea was widely considered by the Jews of the time as misfortune brought about by Herod's unjust execution of John the Baptist. The approximate dates presented by Josephus are in concordance with other historical records, and most scholars view the variation between the motive presented by Josephus and the New Testament accounts is seen as an indication that the Josephus passage is not a Christian interpolation.