Christians love to spank off to Josephus because he allegedly confirms their godman's existence but let's have a closer look.
"Testimonium Flavianum"
"Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
– Josephus (aka Joseph ben Matthias) The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3: the so called Testimonium Flavianum
Flavius Josephus is a highly respected and much-quoted Romano-Jewish historian. The early Christians were zealous readers of his work. A native of Judea, living in the 1st century AD, Josephus was actually governor of Galilee for a time (prior to the war of 70 AD) – the very province in which Jesus allegedly did his wonders. Though not born until 37 AD and therefore not a contemporary witness to any Jesus-character, Josephus at one point even lived in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle. Josephus' two major tomes are History of The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews. In these complementary works, the former written in the 70s, the latter in the 90s AD, Josephus mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era.
At face value, Josephus appears to be the answer to the Christian apologist's dreams.
In a single paragraph (the so-called Testimonium Flavianum) Josephus confirms every salient aspect of the Christ-myth:
1. Jesus' existence 2. his 'more than human' status 3. his miracle working 4. his teaching 5. his ministry among the Jews and the Gentiles 6. his Messiahship 7. his condemnation by the Jewish priests 8. his sentence by Pilate 9. his death on the cross 10. the devotion of his followers 11. his resurrection on the 3rd day 12. his post-death appearance 13. his fulfillment of divine prophesy 14. the successful continuance of the Christians.
In just 127 words Josephus confirms everything – now that is a miracle!
But wait a minute here. Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defences against pagan hostility, makes a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.
The third century Church 'Father' Origen, for example, spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this 'golden paragraph' from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ."
Origen did not quote the 'golden paragraph' because this paragraph had not yet been written.
It was absent from early copies of the works of Josephus and did not appear in Origen's third century version of Josephus, referenced in his Contra Celsum.
Consider, also, the anomalies:
1. How could Josephus claim that Jesus had been the answer to his messianic hopes yet remain an orthodox Jew?
The absurdity forces some apologists to make the ridiculous claim that Josephus was a closet Christian!
2. If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'the Christ' surely he would have added more about him than one paragraph, a casual aside in someone else's (Pilate's) story?
In fact, Josephus relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus! He also reports in great detail the antics of other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and the unnamed 'Egyptian Jew' messiah.
It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians could wish for, he adds nothing that is not in the gospel narratives, nothing that would have been unknown by Christians already.
3. The passage is out of context. Book 18 starts with the Roman taxation under Cyrenius in 6 AD, talks about various Jewish sects at the time, including the Essenes, and a sect of Judas the Galilean. He discusses Herod's building of various cities, the succession of priests and procurators, and so on.
Chapter 3 starts with a sedition against Pilate who planned to slaughter all the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water to Jerusalem, and the Jews protested. Pilate sent spies among the Jews with concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre.
Then comes the paragraph about Jesus, and immediately after it, Josephus continues:
'And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ...'
Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be 'another terrible misfortune.' It is only a Christian who would have considered this to be a Jewish tragedy.
Paragraph 3 can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter. It flows better without it. Outside of this tiny paragraph, in all of Josephus's voluminous works, there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere.
4. The phrase 'to this day' confirms that this is a later interpolation. There was no 'tribe of Christians' during Josephus's time. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.
5. The hyperbolic language is uncharacteristic of the historian:
'... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him."
This is the stuff of Christian propaganda.
In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Constantine.
Bishop Eusebius, that great Church propagandist and self-confessed liar-for-god, was the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus, about the year 340 AD. This was after the Christians had become the custodians of religious correctness.
Whole libraries of antiquity were torched by the Christians. Yet unlike the works of his Jewish contemporaries, the histories of Josephus survived. They survived because the Christian censors had a use for them. They planted evidence on Josephus, turning the leading Jewish historian of his day into a witness for Jesus Christ ! Finding no references to Jesus anywhere in Josephus's genuine work, they interpolated a brief but all-embracing reference based purely on Christian belief.
Do we need to look any further to identify Eusebius himself as the forger?
Sanctioned by the imperial propagandist every Christian commentator for the next thirteen centuries accepted unquestioningly the entire Testimonium Flavianum, along with its declaration that Jesus “was the Messiah.”
And even in the twenty first century scholars who should know better trot out a truncated version of the 'golden paragraph' in a scurrilous attempt to keep Josephus 'on message.'
In a novel embellishment to the notion of an orthodox Jew giving testimony of Jesus, defenders of the faith have in recent times tossed an Arabic version of the Josephus text on to their pile of dubious evidence. The Arabic recension was brought to light in 1971 by Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Pines himself remained cautious about claims of untampered authenticity but the brethren have no such reservations, such is their desperation to keep Josephus in the witness stand for Jesus.
The work in question is actually a history of the world to the year 941/942 penned by a Christian Arab bishop, Agapius of Hierapolis. His World History preserves, in Arabic translation, a version of the Testimonium minus the most obvious Christian interpolations.
But what does a 10th century copy actually prove?
Claims that the Arabic passage itself dates from the 4th century are untenable (written Arabic barely existed at such an early date). Moreover Agapius was a Melkite Christian (pro-Byzantium) at a time of intensifying Islamization of his native Syria. What he wrote was political correctness for his own times. A new Shia Hamdani dynasty had been established barely 50 miles away in Aleppo. Its first prince, Sayf ad Dawlah ("sword of the state"), began a century of persistent attacks against Byzantium. Agapius' paraphrase of a Syriac rendition of Josephus from a Greek original rather significantly mentions JC's "condemnation to die" but not the actuality of it and of JC being "alive" 3 days later –
in other words, a carefully balanced compatibility with Muhammad's view of a Jesus as a prophet who did not die on the cross.In short, the Arabic Josephus is no evidence of the Christian godman and serves only to confuse the unwary.
"Here is an historian who remembers and records in his work with staggering efficiency and in voluminous detail the events and personalities and sociopolitical subtleties of eight decades and more. Can we believe that Josephus would have been ignorant of this teaching revolutionary and the empire-wide movement he produced, or that for some unfathomable reason he chose to omit Jesus from his chronicles?"
There is no doubt that Christians existed, from the early years of the second century certainly, and – as heretical Jews and under diverse names – up to a generation earlier. Belief in a Messiah (a 'Christ' in Greek) was endemic among the Jews after all. But belief in a celestial Christ does not equate to belief in a flesh-and-blood 'Jesus of Nazareth' – and when the 'heretical' and 'gnostic' views of early Christians are examined 'Jesus of Nazareth' is noticeably absent. And to press the point, even a belief in a 'Jesus of Nazareth' does not make him a reality – it is only the belief that is a reality. None abashed, Christian apologists compound their suspect 'logic' by recruiting notable pagans as witnesses, writers who were doing their best to faithfully report on a suspect cult. And as ever in the history of Christianity, in the hands of its scribes, forgery augments what the ancient writers actually wrote, the better to bring unbelievers to the One True Faith.
Now it is time to deal with the other supposed mention of Jesus of Nazareth in Josephus.
"... when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned."
In this passage Josephus is talking about machinations to secure the high priesthood. Ananus comes from a dynasty of high priests. We have a passing, almost blasé, reference to someone called James, whom Joseph obviously considers a minor character.
Some translations, to preserve a more 'authentic' tone, have Josephus write "the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ".
But if we read on, in the same paragraph, Josephus tells us that there were appeals to the new procurator (not over the stoning of James but because of the calling of the Sanhedrin by Ananus!) and:
"... Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest."
Josephus tells us precisely who James is the brother of – Jesus bar Damneus!
If you drop the spurious clause about "being called the Christ", doubtless inserted by a Christian editor, then this James would have been the brother of the guy who eventually made high priest because of James' execution! Moreover, the reference to "Christ" here relies on the thoroughly discredited "explanation" of the term inserted in chapter 18! (Testimonium Flavianum)
In Josephus' text, Jesus son of Damneus is the more important of the two, that's why he puts his name first. James may well have led a zealous faction of "law breakers", and he clearly had a brother in high places, but that's about all we learn from Josephus.
Its worth noting that Josephus does not bother mentioning the death of James in his Jewish Wars. Instead, it is Ananus who gets Josephus' sympathy:
"I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city (Jerusalem), and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs, whereon they saw their high priest, and the procurer of their preservation, slain in the midst of their city."
A little later, at 20.9.4 in Antiquities, Josephus explains how the "Ananus faction" regained the high priesthood but also how the two feuding sects continued their enmity:
"And now Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, became the successor of Jesus, the son of Damneus, in the high priesthood, which the king had taken from the other; on which account a sedition arose between the high priests, with regard to one another; for they got together bodies of the boldest sort of the people, and frequently came, from reproaches, to throwing of stones at each other."
Control of the high priesthood became more volatile as the clouds of war gathered.
There you have it, all that Josephus has to mention about a man who allegedly turned water into wine, drove herds of swine off of cliffs, magically created food for hundreds, healed the sick and lame, raised the dead and bodily rose from death himself. Yup, that's it. A few paltry, easily discountable Christian interpolations. No details, no nothing. It is also worth mentioning that Josephus usually loves going into excruciating detail about his characters and one is left only to wonder why he does not do the same with the radical Jesus of Nazareth who performed miracle after miracle and created such an uproar for Pontius Pilate.
