Critics giving Josephus a precedence over Luke

by Damien F. Mackey “Josephus, supposedly, wrote his autobiography toward the end of his life, ca. the beginning of the second century CE. So the author of Luke, if he were emulating Josephus’s passage would, therefore, have written this passage later in the second century CE.!”. Michael Lockwood Following on from my perennial theme, recalled again in my recent article: Vespasian ‘becoming a god’ (8) Vespasian 'becoming a god' about scholars always, in knee-jerk reaction, giving chronological precedence to pagan legends over the (Hebrew) biblical texts, e.g: - Hammurabi’s Code supposed to have influenced Mosaïc Law; - Akhnaton’s Hymn to the Aten having influenced King David’s Psalm 104. - Etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam, I now find, too, that such-minded critics have long been suggesting that the later Josephus had influenced the earlier Luke. That’s right, it immediately fails the common sense, pub test! And even more so if Qumranic expert, Fr. Jean Carmignac, was correct in dating the Gospel of Luke to “… between 58 and 60 [AD] …. But the earliest dates are clearly more probable: … (Greek) Luke a little after 50 [AD]”. This is decades before Josephus wrote his major works some time after 70 AD! So why not argue things the other way around? It would make more (common) sense. There are various instances of thematic convergence between Josephus and Luke, with Josephus considered to have influenced Luke. That is the stance that Robinson Smith, for instance, took, as far back as 1913, as adjudged by his title “Fresh Light on the Synoptic Problem: Josephus a Lukan Source” (The American Journal of Theology, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Oct., 1913), pp. 614-621 (8 pages)). Now, more than a century later, Michael Lockwood is found pursuing the same theme, claiming that Luke’s fictitious, “mythical” account of the boy Jesus teaching in the Temple had its origins in Josephus’s own boyhood experience. Thus Lockwood wrote last year (2024), in his article: “Luke 2:41-50 Fictionally Imitates a Passage in Historian Josephus’s Autobiography”: Jesus, at age 12, goes into the Jerusalem Temple and enlightens the priests; With Josephus, age 14, high priests & others come out of the Temple to be enlightened by him! Luke 2:41-50: ¶ 41 Now it was the practice of his parents to go to Jerusalem every year for the Passover festival; 42 and when he was twelve, they made the pilgrimage as usual. 43 When the festive season was over and they started for home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know of this, 44 but thinking that he was with the party they journeyed on for a whole day, and only then did they begin looking for him among their friends and relations. 45 As they could not find him they returned to Jerusalem to look for him; 46 and after three days they found him sitting in the temple surrounded by the teachers, listening to them and putting questions; 47 and all who heard him were amazed at his intelligence and the answers he gave. 48 His parents were astonished to see him there, and his mother said to him, ‘My son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ 49 ‘What made you search?’ he said. ‘Did you not know I was bound to be in my Father’s house?’ 50 But they did not understand what he meant. – The New English Bible Josephus, The Life of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston, p. 1: ¶ Moreover, when I was a child, and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning; on which account the high priests and principal men of the city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law. That Josephus, at the young age of fourteen, was commended for his love of learning would not be particularly extraordinary. But what follows, in this same passage taken from the beginning of his autobiography, certainly is extraordinary! That high priests of the Jerusalem Temple came to him often with the “principle” (i.e., most learned) men of the city to learn his opinion, mind you, on “points of law”, seems a great exaggeration! The “law”, here, stands for the whole of the Pentateuch, of course. Josephus, supposedly, wrote his autobiography toward the end of his life, ca. the beginning of the second century CE. So the author of Luke, if he were emulating Josephus’s passage would, therefore, have written this passage later in the second century CE. Employing Mimesis Criticism, the Luke passage, above, would be treated as hypertext (the passage which alludes in some way to another passage written earlier, the hypotext). The hypotext, above, would be the passage from Josephus’s ‘Autobiography’. Is this a clear example of fictionalized mimetic dependence of a passage in Luke’s gospel on the historical material written by Josephus? OR Did the notorious 3rd-4th century CE Christian historian, Eusebius, interpolate the wise-child episode into Josephus’s ‘Autobiography’, attempting to harmonize it with the mythical episode of Luke 2:41-50 ? ….