JOSEPHUS' ACCOUNT OF JESUS

Flavius Josephus was a rather interesting character. He and one other Jew refrained from carrying out the suicide pact by which all of their other compatriots on the Mount of Masada perished right before the Roman troops stormed their citadel. The two of them surrendered and were treated well by their captors, who eventually elevated Josephus to a very responsible position in the Roman government after which time (around AD 90) he wrote a series of books recounting the events in the life of the Jews for the entertainment and edification of a Roman audience.

In his most well-known book, Antiquities of the Jews, he reviewed all the history of the Jewish people almost up to the time of his writing. One of the most famous and controversial statements in that book appears in Book XVIII, Chapter III and reads as follows in English translation (at least in my own copy, which looks as if it were dated to the late 1800's):

“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 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.”

From the view of Christian apologetics, this independent verification of the Deity of Jesus Christ seems almost too good to be true. And has often been said, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” After all, is it really likely that a Jewish writer for a Roman audience would write down in black and white that a combination of Jewish authorities and a Roman governor had perpetrated the greatest miscarriage of justice ever carried out in the whole history of mankind? Josephus would have both been drummed out of his cushy job with the Romans and totally shunned by his fellow Jews. So what can we make of this situation?

Because of the huge unlikelihood that a born survivor like Josephus would have risked everything he had worked for, especially since there was absolutely no subsequent evidence that he himself had become a Christian (and actually the early Christian writer Origen out and out states that Josephus was not a believer), that whole passage has been widely discounted for centuries as a later pious fraud added by some well-meaning anonymous Christian. However, by doing so we may well be throwing out the baby with the bath water, so to speak.

First, let us examine what F.F. Bruce, in his slim 1943 book The New Testament Documents: are they reliable? has to say.

a. He begins by noting that the early Christian historian Eusebius quotes this same passage in the same form in his own writing around AD 300, giving a good indication that the text had not been altered since its original writing.

b. Secondly, Josephus' words do not have to be taken as his own opinion, but as that of the Christians themselves. For example, “If indeed we should call him a man” may be nothing but sarcasm. Also “This man was the Christ” and the references to the resurrection could be a straight reporting of what others called him.

c. The above point is especially likely since, as Bruce points out, the history of transmission of Josephus' writings over the years demonstrates a marked propensity to drop words and short phrases such as “supposedly” or “as was popularly believed.” As potential proof of that contention, Bruce notes that elsewhere in the same book by Josephus, James is called brother of “the so-called Christ.”

Fast forward some 80 years to today and we will see that the controversy still lives on. The Fall 2026 issue of BAR magazine contains an interview with Bible scholar Thomas Schmidt in which he makes the following interesting observations:

a. As noted above, there is a definite contradiction if one accepts the view that Josephus accepted the resurrection as a proved fact but still refused to become a Christians.

b. Schmidt then examined Josephus' use elsewhere of words and phrases which appear in this controversial passage. His conclusion is that “they don't seem nearly as positive; they seem far more neutral. For example, Josephus is traditionally read saying that after Jesus was crucified, he appeared to the disciples alive again...But in Josephus's other writings, the Greek word he uses, phainomai, simply means 'seem.' So we should translate the passage as 'it seemed to them that he was alive again.' which means, of course that Josephus is just reporting what the disciples thought.

c. To cap off Schmidt's arguments, he next looks at one early translation of Josephus into Latin by the noted scholar Jerome and a Syriac translation by one Jacob of Edessa. Both of these texts read, :”(Jesus) was believed (or thought to be) to be the Christ” rather than “He was the Christ.”

Schmidt concludes: “There's no way Jacob and Jerome could have been copying each other – they were separated by centuries and working in different languages. It looks like they each had independent access to an original Greek manuscript of Josephus that had a different reading, where Josephus wrote that Jesus was only considered to be the Christ.”

Conclusion

So what are we left with in terms of apologetic material that can be trusted? It turns out that we are left with quite a bit: early evidence independent of the Bible or perhaps biased Christian sources of the following:

a. The existence of an historical character named Jesus who was widely regarded as an inspired teacher at the time and by many others as actually divine.

b. Jesus' ability to do miraculous works.

c. The fact that events in Jesus' earthly life seemed to match what the OT prophets had predicted years earlier of the coming Messiah.

d. The widespread belief that after his crucifixion he appeared in a bodily resurrected form to many of his believers.

e. The continuing presence of Christian believers among both Jews and Gentiles even at a protracted period of time after Christ died.

I am convinced that such debates and various opinions will continue on into the future and only end when God chooses to bring our current existence to a sudden stop and replaces it with a new and much better existence.