FOREWORD
Josephus the first century historian supposedly wrote something paltry about Jesus that proved he lived.
“An end was put to this uprising. Now about the same time, a wise man called Jesus, if it be right to call him a man for he was a worker of wonderful works and a teacher of men who like to receive the truth. He won over to him many of the Jews and also many of the Gentiles. He was the Messiah or Christ. Pilate at the request of the chief men among us condemned him to crucifixion. When that happened those who loved at from the first did not abandon him because he appeared to them alive on the third day as the prophets of God had forecasted and not only that but ten thousand other things about him. The tribe of Christians called after him are not extinct even today. About this time another sad calamity put the Jews into great crisis and terrible disgusting things happened concerning the Temple of Isis in Rome.”
Some say the last line about the Temple is a possible hint that Josephus is deliberately making a digression about Jesus. If so then why does the text contain explosive stuff. You don't write a digression in that way. It is clear that if he wrote about Jesus then what he wrote in reality was anything but important - it is almost a note stuck in the middle of the really important stuff. Even the temple of Isis tale was more important! It cannot compare to the Jesus calamity!
Zindler says that Josephus starts with writing, “I will now first take notice of the wicked attempt about the of Isis, and will then give an account of the Jewish affairs.” Then at the end he goes, "I now return to the relation of what happened about this time to the Jews of Rome, as I formerly told you I would." Josephus was not going to digress to Jesus on that page when that page was written in a way to alert you to digressions. No hint of a digression occurs as Zindler says with the Jesus tale. Jumping from Jesus to the Jews in Rome is a bit odd.
The purpose of this study on this small piece Josephus allegedly wrote about Jesus Christ is to show that it cannot be used as evidence for anything about Jesus including his existence. In actual fact it makes it likely that he never existed at all. Because Josephus was a Jew and a supporter of the Roman Empire which didn’t tolerate Messiahs and considered allegiance to them to be treason against the divine Emperor in Rome this passage has been inserted or reworked by a Christian. It has solely been Christian copyists who have preserved Josephus's writings for us (page 43, The Marian Conspiracy) and understandably we can be suspicious about this Testament. If a Christian went to the trouble of putting it together and getting it passed off as Josephus' work it would indicate that there was a need to fabricate evidence for the existence of Jesus. There can be no doubt that the passage is principally intended to bolster its main statement that there was a man called Jesus. The other details are just meant to back this up. We refuse to consider attempts to reconstruct the original that Josephus wrote for there is no reason to think he wrote any of the Testament at all.
The funny thing is, Josephus in the Jewish Wars recorded an eyewitness testimony that a cow gave birth to a lamb in the Temple. This was recorded ten years after the event unlike the gospel miracles which were recorded longer after the supposed event. Yet Christians scoff at this miracle and believe the gospel miracle tales. They believe what Josephus allegedly wrote about Jesus Christ and his miracles though it was written longer after. If they did not like Jesus they would be saying that Josephus was unreliable regarding miracle reports.
If you can't be bothered reading on, know that the Testament of Josephus has been tampered with or inserted altogether.
It is argued that we have no copies of Josephus’ work that are older than the ninth century and as all these copies have the Testament in some form it is stupid to say the Testament is a complete forgery and that Josephus never mentioned Jesus as a real man. This argument is wrong for Origen wrote about what Josephus had to say about Jesus and mentioned book 18 where the Testament occurs and found nothing connected to Jesus in it so he just mentioned what it said about John and had to go to book 20 to get material about Jesus. The way Origen writes proves that there was no mention of Jesus except in book 20.
Some would say that Occam’s Razor says we should assume as little tampering as we can. But that is only if we can’t believe that the whole thing is an interpolation. And we can. So the simplest belief is that we take the whole thing about Jesus is an insertion for there is no need for it in the text. But say we don’t wish to go that far then Occam’s Razor tells us that the smooth way is to assume that rather than reading, "At this time there was a Jesus" we could read, "At this time there may have been a Jesus" or "At this time there was said to be a Jesus". That makes the whole passage unable to prove anything about Jesus and saves us the trouble of working out all the things we think are insertions.
Whatever this book says there are only three things that need be kept in mind. One, is that Josephus is not a sound witness in regard to Jesus if he did write the piece about Jesus for it was too unlike Josephus to dish out Christian propaganda. Two, if the text has been interfered with there is no reason to assume that the original did not refer to Jesus as a apparition or a lie or something. Three, there is no reason to believe Josephus wrote anything about Jesus at all. We just don't know so we should not be using Josephus to provide evidence that Jesus existed. End of story.
JOSEPHUS AND JESUS
Flavius Josephus, born in 37 AD, was the most important Jewish historian of the times. This dedicated writer created a monumental history of the Jews called Jewish Antiquities. It was written sometime in the early nineties. That Josephus was no Christian can be gleaned from his book. Yet it contains a piece popularly known as the Testament of Flavius that professes faith in Jesus. This piece can only be a Christian interpolation which was pulled off easily enough because it was nearly all Christians who copied the book for posterity (A Reply to JP Holdings "Shattering" by G.A. Wells). That proves that somebody knew there was no Jesus for the insertion would only have been made to prove that there was one. It is not concerned with showing Jesus to be what Christians believe him to be but only says the things that they believed about him for it only makes statements and gives no verification for them.
Had any of it been written by Josephus who did make mistakes but who told us his sources we would be reading where he got his data from especially when it was controversial data that both Jew and Roman did not want to hear about.
Josephus wrote under the sponsorship of the Romans. That is crucial for understanding why all his alleged references to Jesus are forgeries put in decades later for they say things that offend the sponsors and Josephus could not have dared do that.
Josephus wrote about John the Baptist as a good man but was clear John did not preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It was a baptism of symbolic ritual purification of the body not the soul. Such washings were traditional in Judaism and included the racist notion that you must wash non-Jew grime off. He said it was specified that you were not to look for the baptism for forgiveness. He does not link John and Jesus at all despite the gospels saying John was the Prophet who had to baptise and point out the Messiah and testify that God anointed Jesus as his son and Messiah. The gospels hold that Jesus took a baptism of repentance not for himself but for us and so that the Holy Spirit could come on him like a dove and God could speak and say he was his beloved son. The gospels contradict Josephus on the baptism which is fatal to what Jesus was supposedly about. That is so serious that even if Josephus did write the Testament about Jesus it would not count as great evidence. We would just have to say, "The evidence is mixed so we don't know if we can support a Jesus with it or not."
The Christians use the baptism of John for repentance as described in the gospels to argue we have a baptism that really does forgive sins and it is for all meaning racist limitations are to be cast out.
The baptism of John and possibly Jesus is so different from Christian baptism that all they have in common is the water.
Josephus does not even put the alleged Jesus material beside the John material! Another issue is, if the harmless saintly John had to be executed, as he says, in case he would lead to religious strife, then how come Jesus who the gospels say made more impact and was thought to be the Messiah in a more serious fashion, was not even monitored or restricted? Jesus was supposed to be popular when John was arrested and before that.
The Testament is too dogmatic to be from Josephus. It is in book 18. It tells us about Jesus:
1) That he appeared at the time Pilate put down a sedition when the Jews protested against his using Temple money to bring water to Jerusalem
2) That he was wise and a teacher of those who receive the truth with pleasure
3) That may not have been a real human being – “it may be unlawful to call him a man”
4) That he did miracles - but goes into no detail
5) That he won over many Jews and non-Jews
6) That he was the Christ or the Messiah, God's anointed king
7) That Pilate had him executed by crucifixion to please the leaders of the Jews
8) That his closest friends still believed in him when this happened and remained loyal
9) That he was up and about again on the third day, restored to life
10) That he appeared to his devoted disciples mentioned in 8
11) That the prophets foretold a huge number of marvels about him topping it off with prophecies of the resurrection
12) That the tribe of Christians has not disappeared to this day
The text questions if it would be right to call Jesus a man implying he was a vision or a god or something. The gospels say that Jesus certainly was a human being who had human weaknesses albeit probably not a sinner and very very frequently call him the Son of Man instead of questioning the appropriateness of calling him human. The gospels say that those who saw him after his resurrection had lost their faith up until they saw him. So the author did not know the gospels at all or know the traditions in them or he just didn’t take them seriously. (Not taking them seriously would be a strong sign that somebody knew they were rubbish!) If Josephus had written this he would have got the doctrine of the humanity of Jesus from the Christians and some of the stories about him. The humanity was stressed among the early Christians and this passage must have been written at a time when Jesus came to be seen as divine which happened long after Josephus was dead. The way it says that the tribe of Christians has not vanished implies surprise that it is not gone. In the early Church there were many sects that claimed to be the real Christian faith. This passage had to have been written by a member of one of them who considered the vast majority of Christians to be fakes.
If Jesus existed he certainly claimed to be the saviour. This insulted the gods of Rome and the divine Emperor and therefore the whole Roman political regime. The intolerant Romans would not stand for that either. Now the problem here is that the name Jesus means Yahweh saves or Saviour from God if you like. Jesus used it as more than a name: as a job description. In that context, Josephus would not even have named Jesus in his work even if he did mention him. That means that when he mentioned Jesus twice in his book that it was an insertion each time. That means he never wrote that there was a man called Jesus so the whole Testament is dubious when something so basic to it is and his later alleged reference to James being the brother of Jesus is also fake. Josephus did mention other Jesuses but it was different. The name Jesus was the perfect name for the Messiah because the Messiah was to be the true king of the Jews who would save his people from foreign oppression. Even Jesus’ name implied a possible rebellion against Rome. It certainly implied that Rome had no right to occupy Palestine and would be an encouragement to people who wanted to use violence to break the Roman rule.
Josephus could not slight Rome by saying that Jesus was the Christ for that implied that Rome had no right to rule Palestine and shouldn't have went along with its law that all who claim to be Christ which means political king must be destroyed in the case of Jesus. Rome would not have liked it said that somebody so controversial as Jesus who could have wittingly or unwittingly caused great trouble for Rome was wise. Josephus didn't want his head cut off. Elsewhere Josephus stated that the promised ruler of the world or Messiah according to a divine oracle was Vespasian, the Roman Emperor, who was in Judea when he was declared to be the successor of Tiberias (page 137, The Jesus Mysteries).
Christians respond that Josephus knew there was no harm in Jesus claiming to be the true king for he meant that he was just a spiritual non-political king. But in that case, Josephus would have had to have stated that Jesus was not the Messiah as understood by the Jews who would come to rule the Holy Land and drive away its enemies. He didn't so they are wrong. Messiah meant warrior king. If you don’t like to be classed one of the Mafia you don’t use a Mafia title and claim to be the Godfather.
Jesus wilfully caused a riot in the Temple so how could Josephus praise his wisdom and goodness and example? How could Josephus say that men who like truth listen to Jesus when Rome didn’t listen to Jesus? To say that Jesus taught men who receive the truth with pleasure is to insult Rome which claimed divine protection and inspiration and to insult its laws which were believed to have been guided by the superior wisdom of the gods and the divine Roman Emperor. The Testament lies that Jesus won over many Gentiles when he was alive for he said himself he was sent only to the sheep of the House of Israel and though he was courteous to Gentiles except the pagan woman who he abused and rejected most horribly he did not set out to convert them or welcome them as disciples.
The suggestion that Pilate executed Jesus because of an accusation against Jesus made by the leading Jewish men is interesting. Why does it not say what the accusation was? We can assume it was terrorism. But why were the Romans not accusing as well? It would not have been anything that would bother religious Jews as such. It had to be a civil matter.
To say that Jesus was a doer of miracles or wonderful works is to insult Rome because these works were nearly always done to draw Jews to a deeper appreciation and commitment to their religion which abhorred Gentile rulers and pagan beliefs. Rome did not want this and found it very offensive. Josephus then did not write this. It is even more offensive when a man claims to be the Christ for then he is doing his miracles to defend this claim which denies the allegedly divine authority of the Emperor.
CONCLUSION
The testimony contradicts Josephus's pattern. It is sort of creed and not his work. The story of Jesus if he were largely made up or entirely made up then would have been in dire need of Christians to fake evidence.