Chapter 4 (“Problems with Josephus”) of Michael J. Alter’s book contains a comprehensive discussion (50 pages) of the arguments relating to the TF’s authenticity. He sets out arguments in helpful tabular format, discusses the contributions of John Meir, Robert A. Van Voorst, Gary Goldberg, Ken Olson, Paul Hopper and others (Allen, Carrier, Doherty, Feldman, Leidner, Licona, Paget, Price, Shulman, Viklund, Whealey…) in addition to his own analysis.
Sixteen rebuttal arguments against authenticity of the TF are presented. But the question of authenticity is shown to be only one of the “problems with Josephus” regarding the historical Jesus.
That’s chapter 4 — here is the TOC for the rest of Volume 1:
1 Habermas and Licona’s First Minimal Fact: Jesus Died by Crucifixion—An Overview
2 Jesus Was Not Brain-Dead While On the Cross
3 Problems with the Gospels and Acts
4 Problems with Josephus
5 Problems with Mara bar Serapion
6 Problems with Tacitus
7 Additional Problems with the Gospels
8 Problems with the Gospel of John and Jesus’ Crucifixion 1
9 The Shroud of Turin
10 Medical Issues Continued
11 Islamic Theology and Jesus’ CrucifixionDid Jesus Die on the Cross?
12 Is Joseph of Arimathea Historical?
13 Was the Tomb Really Accessible?
14 Could the Disciples Preach an Empty Tomb in Jerusalem?
15 Why a Lack of Controversy Over the Tomb by the Public?
16 Why a Lack of Interest in the Tomb by Roman Leadership?
17 Why a Lack of Interest in the Tomb by the Jewish Authorities?
18 Was There Controversy About the Empty Tomb Among Jesus’ Followers?
19 What Were the Consequences of an Empty Tomb?
20 Three Alternative Possibilities
21 Interactions with Christian Apologists
Bruce Chilton writes the Foreword: This highly concentrated volume is only the first fruit of a series dedicated to “The Resurrection and Its Apologetics.” The care of this initial foray promises future volumes that are relentless in their argumentation, sharp in their polemics, and judicious in their selection of the evidence and the arguments presented.
Alter, Michael J. 2024. The Resurrection and Its Apologetics: Jesus’ Death and Burial, Volume One. Resource Publications.
ChatGPT’s depiction of Isaac “receiving with pleasure” the news he is to be sacrificed!
Thomas C. Schmidt asserts that Josephus portrayed the followers of Jesus in a negative light by writing that they “received truisms with pleasure” (according to Schmidt’s translation). I have demonstrated in the previous post that Schmidt’s “truisms” is a mistranslation. The correct translation can only be “true things” or “truths”. But Schmidt also argued that when Josephus added the words “with pleasure” he was conveying the idea that the disciples were being led by their worldly, carnal, physical desires. The word for “pleasure”, he argues, almost necessarily conveys a slur against the disciples.
Again, Schmidt’s argument is based on selective evidence. Though the word for “pleasure” is often used to refer to sensuous interests or wicked motivations it is also used – by Josephus as well as other ancient authors – in connection with virtues and contains not the slightest hint of anything derogatory.
The phrase ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων) in Josephus’ writings most frequently refers to overzealous or heedless actions. (Schmidt 2025, 207)
“Most frequently” is misleading. If Schmidt is referring to the exact forms of the two words that he quotes then there is only one other place in Josephus’ writings where those forms of the words appear in combination. Furthermore, it just happens that in that one other place the phrase has a distinctly, unambiguous positive flavour. In the wake of the assassination of Gaius Caligula, a Roman senator’s speech urging careful judgment, caution and wisdom and virtuous decision-making is “received with pleasure” by the other senators.
Sentius used such words, and they were received with pleasure [ἡδονῇ δεχομένων] by the senators, as well as by all of the equites who were present. (Ant. XIX.185.2)
But it is more likely that Schmidt is referring to similar phrases built upon various forms of those words (“receive” and “pleasure”) as the context required. There are eight such instances, not including the TF, in Antiquities of the Jews. The first such instance is most interesting. . . .
Abraham had just explained to his son Isaac that he was about to sacrifice him at God’s command. How did Isaac “receive” these words? He “received” them with “pleasure”!
But Isaac—since he had such a father, it was necessary for his disposition to be noble—received the words with pleasure [δέχεται πρὸς ἡδονὴν τοὺς λόγους], and . . . declared it just, if both God and his father intended it. (Ant. I.232.2 = AJ 1.13.4)
No matter how often Josephus elsewhere spoke of wicked or foolish audiences receiving corrupt words that titillated their own pleasurable feelings, there is absolutely no way that anyone can read Josephus’s account of Isaac and think Josephus was implying some negative innuendo towards Isaac’s response to Abraham’s words.
Josephus boasted that the Judean nation observed their holy laws “with pleasure” throughout their entire lives:
What form of government then can be more holy than this? what more worthy kind of worship can be paid to God than we pay, where the entire body of the people are prepared for religion, where an extraordinary degree of care is required in the priests, and where the whole polity is so ordered as if it were a certain religious solemnity? For what things foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to observe for a few days’ time, and call them Mysteries and Sacred Ceremonies, we observe with great pleasure [= ταῦτα μεθ᾽ ἡδονῆς] and an unshaken resolution during our whole lives.(Against Apion, 2.189 Whiston’s translation adds “great” to capture the tone of Josephus’s words here.)
Schmidt acknowledges one positive instance of a combination of those words. The Pharisees who protested against Pilate are said to have been willing to “receive” death “with pleasure” rather than break the Laws of God.
But those who had thrown themselves face down and bared their throats said they would rather receive death with pleasure [ἡδονῇ δέξασθαι] than dare to transgress the wisdom of the laws. (Ant. XVIII.59.2)
Schmidt directs readers to Olson’s chapter:
For an overview of positive usages of ἡδονή in both Josephus and Eusebius, see Olson, ‘A Eusebian Reading’, 104–5. (Schmidt 2025, 78. See also Olson 2013)
So when Schmidt writes . . .
The phrase ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων) in Josephus’ writings most frequently refers to overzealous or heedless actions. (Schmidt 2025, 207)
. . . his words have no more relevance to the TF than they do to what Josephus meant by his discussion of Isaac “receiving with pleasure” the words of his father or the Pharisees “receiving with pleasure” death rather than disobedience to God.
There remains one passage in Antiquities that surely must ring with a certain familiarity among those aware of the TF: Josephus’s account of a certain Alexander who claimed to be the son of King Herod after Herod’s death. Schmidt writes:
In fact, in another passage, much underappreciated by scholars, Josephus uses the very same wording to describe how a certain imposter pretended to be Alexander, the son of Herod, and ‘convinced as many of the Jews that came to meet him to believe [that he was Alexander]’ (Ἰουδαίων ὁπόσοις εἰς ὁμιλίαν ἀφίκετο ἐπηγάγετο εἰς πίστιν), Josephus then says that ‘the cause [of this] was that men received [his] words with pleasure’ (αἴτιον δὲ ἦν τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ ἡδονῇ δεχόμενον τοὺς λόγους). Taken together, Josephus claims that the false Alexander ‘convinced’ or even ‘led astray’ (ἐπηγάγετο) certain men (ἀνθρώπων) because they ‘received’ (δεχόμενον) his words ‘with pleasure’ (ἡδονῇ). Hence, this ‘pleasure’, which the men had in ‘receiving’ the words of the pretender, seems therefore to indicate an overeager, overzealous, or all too credulous belief—not something particularly positive.
Most striking, however, is that the above passage closely parallels the TF which also describes Jesus ‘leading’ or ‘misleading’ (ἐπηγάγετο) ‘men who receive truisms with pleasure’ (ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡδονῇ τἀληθῆ δεχομένων). Such a close linguistic correspondence inescapably points toward Josephus as the responsible party for at least this portion of the TF . . . (Schmidt 2025, 82 – my highlighting)
On the contrary, what it points to is that anyone familiar with the writings of Josephus could have had such a passage in mind as they were drafting the TF. How often does the same writer describe two entirely separate and dissimilar episodes with the same semantic structures. I suspect that sort of parallel is normally what we find among ancient authors who were imitating others. But that’s an analysis project for another time.
In preparation for this post I compiled a list of extracts from both Perseus and TLG that itemize the instances where the words for “pleasure” and “receive” are found throughout all of the writing by Josephus, along with all writings including some form of the word for “pleasure” and “receive” from Josephus and his near contemporaries: Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus and Plutarch. I have decided not to belabor the point by posting them all here. If what I have written above does not suffice to convince anyone, I ask them to contact me directly and I may reconsider my decision.
Conclusion: There is absolutely no innuendo in the TF to suggest that “receiving with pleasure” the “true things” from Jesus in any way at all hinted at something negative. The words of the TF are quite capable of, and even demand, being read as positives: the true things Jesus the teacher taught were received with pleasure/happiness/joy by those who listened to him.
Who am I to discuss the meaning of an ancient Greek word? This is something new for me so I must justify this foray. Up until this year I only had a self-taught level of understanding of koine Greek (the Greek of the New Testament) and would never have had the confidence to address Schmidt’s argument publicly. But this year I have undertaken formal studies at Macquarie University in ancient Greek (Attic). I have been awarded 95%, 96% and most recently 99% in the grammar and translation tests to date. The course covered so far has informed us of the meanings and forms of the word Schmidt claims means “truisms” – along with pointing us to the multiple online tools to assist us with its many occurrences by ancient authors, including Josephus.
Thomas Schmidt attempts to argue that Josephus used a belittling word to describe the teaching of Jesus that attracted his disciples. At best, Schmidt claims, the word he uses is ambiguous, but that the weight of evidence should lead us to read Josephus as depicting the followers of Jesus loving trite banalities. I demonstrate in this post that Schmidt is simply flat wrong. The word Josephus uses cannot be translated the way Schmidt claims.
Josephus’s words about Jesus, the Testimonium Flavianum (TF), begin thus:
And in this time there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher of men who receive truisms with pleasure. . . . (Schmidt’s translation, p. 6 – my highlighting in all quotations)
Truisms?
A truism is “a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting”, “a self-evident, obvious truth”, “a statement that is so obviously true that it is almost not worth saying”, “a statement that is generally accepted as obviously true and is repeated so often that it has become boring”, “a statement the truth of which is obvious or well known; commonplace”. All those meanings come up with a general internet search.
And that is indeed what Thomas Schmidt believes Josephus most likely means to convey to his readers. He explains:
The term τἀληθῆ in the TF should . . . be taken to be fairly general or run-of-the-mill truths, as with the English terms ‘facts at hand’, ‘maxims’, ‘pithy sayings’, or especially ‘truisms’. (Schmidt 2025, 78)
The term ‘truisms’ (τἀληθῆ) . . . suggests basic, run-of-the-mill facts, observations, and the like. (Schmidt 2025, 207)
Here are some examples of truisms:
“It is what it is.”
“Money doesn’t buy happiness.”
“You win some, you lose some.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“Prevention is better than cure.”
“What goes up must come down.”
“No one is perfect.”
“Actions speak louder than words.”
“Actions speak louder than words.”
“People change.”
“Success doesn’t happen overnight.”
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
“Hard work pays off.”
“Practice makes perfect.”
“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
“Patience is a virtue.”
“You can’t win them all!”
“Time heals all wounds.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“You reap what you sow.”
“You can’t please everyone.”
It is almost the definition of a truism that it is a saying that cannot be received “with pleasure”. A truism may offer some small consolation, or a mild laugh, but hardly “pleasure”.
Schmidt argues that the word for “pleasure” in association with what he translates as “truisms” casts a negative connotation. I will reserve my response to that particular argument for another time. Meanwhile, anyone who has any acquaintance at all with ancient moralistic or philosophical writings knows full well that taking joy, delight, even pleasure, in “good things” is noble and right; what is deemed a negative is when pleasure is taken in “less than good” things. Schmidt does point out that some later Christian copyists seemed to be uncomfortable with Josephus using the word “pleasure”, but that is a problem for much later Christian ethical viewpoints.
To be fair, Schmidt does in one place acknowledge that his word for truisms is “ambiguous” (p. 31) and that it could be read as a positive content of what he taught. But his main stress is on insisting that it refers to something negative and poor in content.
Schmidt’s attempt to persuade readers that this particular word means “run of the mill”, “prosaic” bromides is misguided. The word means “truths” or “true things” or “true matters” and such.
There is no ambiguity with the TF’s use of this word. There is no reason at all to think Josephus was being sarcastic or in any way hinting that the teachings of Jesus were shallow trivialities.
talēthē — τἀληθῆ — true things or truisms?
The word Schmidt translates as “truisms” is τἀληθῆ. This is actually a contraction of two words: τά and ἀληθῆ. (The technical term for this kind of combination word form is “crasis”.) τά most simply means “the”: it is the plural neuter form of “the”; ἀληθῆ is normally an adjective meaning “true” (as in true facts, true statements, or indicating the truth of a matter). When the two words come together ἀληθῆ becomes as much a noun as an adjective. The two together mean “the truth”, “truths” or “true things”. (Luschnig and Mitchell 2007, 42, 51, 52, 78, 121, 286)
Οne would be hard pressed to translate τἀληθῆ as “truisms” in any of the above instances.
But what about in the time of Josephus? How was the word used in the first and early second centuries?
I will first of all list examples of how the word was used by authors from around the time of Josephus and then quote examples from Josephus himself. Like Schmidt, I limit myself to the crasis form τἀληθῆ even though other appearances of ἀληθῆ can convey the same meaning.
Dio Chrysostom, ca 40 – 115 CE
Here are translations of every instance I found where Dio Chrysostom uses τἀληθῆ. They are from Orationes. Not a single one could be translated as “truisms”. For the Greek text click on this link to the Perseus site.
Speech 3, section 13: …at that time I risked my life for the sake of my soul, but now, when it is permitted for everyone to speak the truth, I lie, though no danger is present…
Speech 3, section 23: …it does not receive any great favor. For what kind of favor is it thought to be, to speak the truth?
Speech 4, section 2: …because of the greatest authority and power, so that they not only recount true things about such matters, but even exaggerate by inventing them themselves.
Speech 4, section 10: But he flattered none of mankind, rather speaking the truth to all, and possessing not a single drachma, just as he wished.
Speech 4, section 59: …strike with your spear into the illusion; for you will hear the truth from me alone among men, and from no one else could you learn it.
Speech 11, section 3: …just as, I think, it is difficult to take away from those who have raised foster children the one who tells the truth—namely what someone said to them in the beginning…
Speech 11, section 4: …you deemed Homer more trustworthy—even though he told the gravest lies about you—than me, who speaks the truth, and you believed him to be a divine and wise man…
Speech 11, section 16: …to begin from a madman, and they are more inclined to think that those who then condemned him judged rightly that he spoke the truth rather than that he was lying.
Speech 11, section 18: …did he say that in such a way? For the one who does not openly state the truth about the goddesses, but rather in the opposite manner so that falsehoods are more likely to be assumed…
Speech 11, section 22: …he had no less confidence and pride in lying than in speaking the truth.
Speech 11, section 42: …they have no need of wine, but water suffices them to drink—just so, those who wish to know the truth have no need of measures…
Speech 11, section 80: …and Homer agrees to this: for he could not have hidden all the truth;
Speech 11, section 83: …giving gifts to each other like friends. After this, he finally tells the truth: …
Speech 7, section 99: …nor did they praise them as being wise and good and speaking the truth.
Speech 34, section 30: …and as a true guardian of his own fatherland, both thinking and speaking the truth, and through whom the city is better governed and has enjoyed some good.
Speech 21, section 3: …I shall make corrections for them, treating each part in turn, if I am believed while speaking the truth about the more important matters.
Speech 23, section 22: …a kind of honor and power, if they are sensible. For you must listen to the truth and not take it badly, if someone, wishing to praise others…
Speech 53, section 2: …tender and especially resembling women—how could you suppose that he speaks the truth or is fit for anything involving hunting? — Not at all.
Epictetus, ca 50 – 135 CE.
Eighteenth century depiction of Epictetus. Wikimedia
Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 7 Question and answer. For what is promised in discourse? To assert what is true, to eliminate what is false, and to suspend judgment concerning what is unclear.
Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 6 Hades? All roads to it are equal. But if you wish to hear the truth: the shorter one is the one sent by the tyrant.
Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 1 Am I such a person? How so? Are you such a person as to be able to hear the truth? Would that you were!
Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 22 …what kind of enemies. And he must come back, having examined things carefully, to report the truth, not being struck dumb by fear, such that he declares enemies where there are none.
Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 23 Come, are we fulfilling their promise? Tell me the truth. But if you lie, I will tell you: …
Plutarch, ca 40 – 120 CE
Plutarch, Pompey, chapter 13 …to offer himself and stand firm even in the utmost dangers; but upon learning the truth, and perceiving that all men were welcoming and escorting Pompey…
Plutarch, Apophthegmata Laconica, chapter 69 He replied, “We are free men; but others—if they do not speak the truth—will groan.
Plutarch, De genio Socratis, section 18 I do not know,” he said, “O Caphisias; for it is necessary to speak the truth to you.
Plutarch, Adversus Colotem, section 15 …the place, namely the class of propositions, in which all true things are included; for although these exist, there is no actual thing corresponding to them…
Plutarch, De liberis educandis, section 14 And all these things—most fittingly—should accustom children to speak the truth; for lying is slavish and worthy of hatred from all mankind.
Plutarch, Cimon, chapter 2 When the general wrote to Lucullus, he bore witness to the truth, and thus the city, which was in danger, escaped judgment. . . . We shall resume in the written Parallel Lives the deeds of the man, setting forth the truth.
I submit that not a single use of τἀληθῆ by the above contemporaries of Josephus can reasonably be translated as “truisms”. In every case “truisms” would be jarringly out of context and make a nonsense of the point being made.
Flavius Josephus, ca 37 – 100 CE
Now for the instances in the works of Josephus. Schmidt says
Τἀληθῆ is also Josephan and is used by him thirty-nine times in its crasis form, eight of which occur in the same case and number as in the TF. Of these eight, five appear in the Antiquities. (Schmidt 2025, 77)
I have not been able to find the 39 uses Schmidt reports. I suspect there has been a misunderstanding at some point there, given that the Perseus site lists 39 instances of all forms of the word (not just the crasis form that Schmidt is speaking about).
book 3, section 74
…he wrote as one who had found the aforementioned arrangement, considering it fitting to bear witness to the truth for those who deserve it, even if it was likely to bring fame to the one being inscribed.
book 3, section 308 …to neither condemn God with falsehood nor trust those who, having been struck with astonishment, have spoken what is not true concerning the Canaanites, but rather (to trust) those who…
book 4, section 219
…not one witness, but three, or at the very least two, whose testimony will be made true by their past conduct. But let there not be testimony of women because of … immaturity, whom it is likely either for gain or out of fear not to bear true witness. But if someone who has given false testimony [= testimony that is not true = μὴ τἀληθῆ μαρτυρῆσαι] is believed, let him suffer these things, once convicted.
book 8, section 23
…Master, (grant) sound mind and good judgment, by which I may judge the people, having received what is true and just.
book 14, section 3
…but above all, historians ought to aim at accuracy, and not claim to speak the truth about things of which they themselves are ignorant, nor trust those who do.
book 18, section 63 — our passage in question
…for he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of men who receive the truth with pleasure, and he won over many Jews, and also many of the…
The Jewish War
book 1, section 16
…mouth and tongue are loosened, but when it comes to history—where it is necessary to speak the truth and to gather the facts with great effort—they are silenced… from writing about rulers. Let truth in history [same word, ῆς ἱστορίας ἀληθές, though not in crasis form] be honored among us, since among the Greeks it has been neglected.
book 1, section 594
…(over the) corpse, he asked for what reason she had thrown herself down, swearing that if she spoke the truth, he would release her from all punishment; but if she held back, he would punish her severely.
book 3, section 438
…as the truth was uncovered with time, both what happened at Jotapata…
Life of Josephus
section 262 …that they might repent and, having gone back to their homeland, report to those who had sent them the truth about the way I have conducted myself.
Schmidt’s misleading interpretation
When Schmidt writes of this particular word that . . .
it could also be understood positively as referring to an avid pursuit of certain ideals or hard and fast facts (Schmidt 2025, 137)
. . . surely he is not fairly summing up the evidence that he himself has alluded to. In every case of the above quotations, including those from Josephus, there is no question of the word “also” being understood positively. Just look at them: in every case it is understood positively as referring to “an avid pursuit of certain ideals or hard and fast facts”. There are no exceptions.
One could imagine the word well being applied to Jesus teaching about the law, about the truth of the sabbath, about the truth of prophecy, about the truth of the Pharisees and those who take up their cross and follow him.
Schmidt appeals to context:
Schmidt writes that Josephus “often used” the word for “teacher” negatively and that Josephus uses the word τἀληθῆ to refer to “fairly mundane” things. Most importantly though is that these terms do not indicate a positive estimation of Jesus, for ‘teacher’ (διδάσκαλος) is often used by Josephus negatively, ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων) is often negative, and ‘truisms’ (τἀληθῆ) is again fairly mundane in Josephus’ writings. (Schmidt 2025, 79)
Again it is quite misleading to tell readers that “Josephus ‘often used’ the word for ‘teacher’ negatively”. He has repeated the claim:
This phrase is thoroughly Josephan. Διδάσκαλος (teacher) is used sixteen other times by Josephus, often quite negatively.101
101 For further discussion on the negative aspects of διδάσκαλος in Josephus, see Bermejo-Rubio, ‘Hypothetical Vorlage’, 354. (Schmidt 2025, 76)
So I turn to Bermejo-Rubio and this is what I see:
The phrase διδάσκαλος ανθρώπων τών ηδονή τάληθη δεχόμενων seems at first sight positive. Yet, the fact that in the sixteen occurrences of διδάσκαλος in Josephus almost half of them the word has a negative meaning by referring to false teachers . . . (Bermejo-Rubio 2014, 354 – my highlighting)
So Josephus uses the word positively more often than negatively! But if Schmidt pointed that fact out it would have undermined the impression he was trying to lead readers into embracing.
Finally, Schmidt says a Christian interpolater would have used another word for “truth”:
Turning to the word ‘truths’ (τἀληθῆ), it appears at first to signal a positive meaning, but when examined in the context of Josephus’ usage pattern a more neutral implication of τἀληθῆ can be sensed. Of the thirty-nine times that Josephus makes use of the term in the crasis form, as it occurs in the TF, he never once appears to refer to some deep, sublime reality or mystical truth. Instead, in all cases he seems rather to be speaking of various ‘facts’, the ‘present situation’, ‘the way things are’ or ‘truisms’. (Schmidt 2025, 78)
If the historical Jesus was the Jesus of the Gospel of John, maybe so. There Jesus talks in “hidden mysteries” the whole time. But few critical scholars would give much credence to the historical characterization of Jesus in that Gospel. The teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Little Apocalypse, of the Last Supper, of what must be done to inherit eternal life, of the sins of the Pharisees, and so on. Even the parables are pointers to “the facts of the matter about the Kingdom of God”. All of these teachings are best described with the same word that Menander, Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Plutarch and Josephus consistently used to refer to truths that may have been hidden but that had to be sought out, truths about the future, about prophetic fulfilments, about the faith and obedience required to enter eternal life, and the message of the gospel to be preached: τἀληθῆ.
There are no grounds that I can see for imagining that the word τἀληθῆ would not be used by a Christian in a positive sense. There are certainly no grounds for translating the word in a way to suggest Josephus was expressing some negativity (or even neutrality!) towards the teaching of Jesus.
Bibliography:
Bermejo-Rubio, Fernando. 2014. “Was the Hypothetical ‘Vorlage’ of the ‘Testimonium Flavianum’ a ‘Neutral’ Text? Challenging the Common Wisdom on ‘Antiquitates Judaicae’ 18.63-64.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 45 (3): 326–65.
Luschnig, Cecelia Eaton, and Deborah Mitchell. 2007. An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach. 2nd edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Menander, of Athens. 1990. Menandri Reliquiae selectae. Oxonii : E Typographeo Clarendoniano.
Menander, of Athens, and Francis Greenleaf Allinson. 1921. Menander, the Principal Fragments, with an English Translation by Francis G. Allinson. London W. Heinemann.
Schmidt, T. C. 2025. Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Many readers by now will have heard of a new book, freely available, arguing that the first century Jewish historian Josephus really did write a passage about Jesus. The book has been discussed on public forums, blogs, youtube channels, other websites, etc. If you happen not to have heard about it, you can download the book at the publisher’s site:Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ by Thomas C. Schmidt (links to academic profile).
I may discuss core aspects of the work in a series of posts over the coming weeks or months. There is much detail to address but I’ll begin with responses to two striking curiosities in Schmidt’s argument (striking, at least, to me). TF in the following is the abbreviation for Testimonium Flavianum, the technical term scholars have given for the passage about Jesus appearing in Book 18 of Jewish Antiquities by Flavius Josephus.
Schmidt argues that Josephus intended his words about Jesus to be
neither openly negative nor openly positive, and therefore largely neutral. (Schmidt 2025, 203)
That seems straightforward so far. But what follows confuses me. Schmidt proceeds to claim that what Josephus wrote was in some sense deliberately ambiguous.
He did however insert a healthy amount of ambiguity, enough for one to draw several negative or positive inferences about Jesus. (Schmidt 2025, 203)
I don’t quite understand. If one is writing from a perspective of neutrality, neither wanting to express an explicitly hostile nor an explicitly favourable view of Jesus, then one would expect both those hostile to Jesus and those who worship him to be more or less equally disappointed in what they read. If one wants to express neutrality one avoids writing in a manner that can be used as weapons by opposing sides. Neutral expressions do not normally become weapons for hostile debate.
A neutral expression about Jesus would certainly not be a statement that could be interpreted either as outstanding praise or as sneering put-down. That would be surely most unusual. Yet that’s the kind of argument Schmidt uses, at least in part, to justify his claim that ambiguity was to some extent Josephus’s method of writing neutrally.
Look at Schmidt’s assessment of Josephus’s words in introducing Jesus:
‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’
Here’s the context (Schmidt’s translation):
And in this time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher . . . (204, my bolding)
A Sarcastic Josephus – Version 1
For Schmidt, the bolded words can reasonably be read as sarcasm:
[O]ne could always interpret the above statement as sarcastically implying that Jesus was less than human. Evidence of this is that Josephus does elsewhere enjoy using sarcastic barbs in his work. For example, in Against Apion, he sarcastically calls Apion ‘the wonderful Apion’ (ὁ δὲ θαυμαστὸς Ἀ πίων). And he does the same with Justus of Tiberias, his hated enemy, whom he names ‘the most skillful of writers’ (δεινότατε συγγραφέων). If one interprets the TF’s statement about Jesus’ humanity as sarcasm, such would then cast negative light on the previous statement that Jesus was ‘wise’ in as much as it too would become sarcastic. The statement may thus hearken back to how in the Gospels Jesus was accused of not only being in league with demons, but also of being a demon himself. (Schmidt 2025, 71f)
This is surely a blinkered rationalization. Josephus leaves readers in absolutely no doubt about his real views on Apion and Justus. When he uses flattering terms for them the sarcasm is blatantly obvious. There is no doubt about his sarcasm. Sarcasm only works when the speaker or writer gives obvious clues that they are being sarcastic – otherwise the speaker is only having a smirk to himself and hiding his attitude from his audience. I will return to this point.
But do the words “if one ought to call him a man” necessarily mean to say that Jesus could be higher than a human, like an angel or deity? No, not at all. Here we have another ambiguity. Josephus could even be suggesting that Jesus was a demon. Schmidt explains:
Further, as regards Jesus’ humanity, the TF rhetorically wonders whether ‘one ought to call [Jesus] a man’. This harmonizes with how the Gospels present first-century Jews as being conflicted over Jesus, with some . . . accusing him of not only being in league with demons, but of being a demon himself. (Schmidt 2025, 206)
Gospel Foundations
Where did this idea come from? Schmidt cites Matthew 10:25 which quotes Jesus as saying to his disciples:
If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household! (NIV – all Bible verses quoted here are from the NIV)
You were not aware that Jesus’ enemies called him a demon? Maybe that is because Matthew 10:25 is the sole witness in the New Testament that they did. If you are open to diverse scholarly opinions, you will be interested to know that some scholars have concluded that that one verse (Matthew 10:25) was invented by Matthew himself, was in none of Matthew’s sources, and was not spoken by Jesus at all:
The allusion to the Beelzebul incident is Matthew’s own invention. (Funk, Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar 1993, 171)
So the possibility that Josephus sarcastically suggesting Jesus may have been a demon rests on a single debatable verse in the Gospel of Matthew. In other words, it rests on the assumption that the Gospels are trustworthy historical accounts, at least insofar as they help us make a case for the authenticity of the TF.
But I only quoted half of Schmidt’s words above. He also acknowledged that the phrase could also be understood to suggest that Jesus was higher than a man – that is, an angel or even a deity. Here is the other possible allusion:
Further, as regards Jesus’ humanity, the TF rhetorically wonders whether ‘one ought to call [Jesus] a man’. This harmonizes with how the Gospels present first-century Jews as being conflicted over Jesus, with some speculating that he might be the Son of God or even God, and with others accusing him of . . . (Schmidt 2025, 206)
Again, you might be wondering where in the Gospels we read about some Jews speculating that Jesus might be the Son of God or God himself. Schmidt points us towards the following verses, only one of which is from a gospel:
John 20:28
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Hebrews 1:8 (citing Psalm 45)
But about the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.
Philippians 2:6 (Paul citing a Christ hymn)
Who, being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
Few critical scholars would consider the Gospel of John a reliable historical narrative, and fewer still would consider the words of Thomas on confronting the resurrected Christ as historically reliable. Even fewer would regard them as evidence of debates among early Jews about the nature of Christ. If we are to rely on the witness of the Gospels we need to focus on the Jewish debates concerning Jesus in the Gospels such as sabbath regulations and messiahship.
Thus far we have seen how Schmidt attempts to justify specific interpretations of ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’ by anchoring them – with mixed or uncertain success – to the Gospel accounts. This is necessary for Schmidt’s larger argument. What Schmidt argues is that Josephus’s sources of information about Jesus derive from prominent Jewish political and religious persons who had been alive at the time of Jesus, some of whom even met and questioned Jesus. These Jewish leaders, Schmidt avers, knew the controversies surrounding Jesus back around the year 30 CE – that is, they knew first-hand the controversies that we read about in the Gospels. Therefore, the Gospels can be used to throw light on what we read about Jesus in the TF. By a gracefully symmetrical circular argument, Schmidt can then affirm that the TF confirms the historical accuracy of much that we read in the Gospels.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
A Sarcastic Josephus – Version 2
Schmidt is not alone in suggesting that ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’ was written with a sarcastic pen – and therefore must be considered authentic words of Josephus.
While it is unconvincing that the entire TF could be interpreted ironically or sarcastically, Vicent Cernuda makes a strong case that at least this phrase of the TF could be interpreted in such a way; see Cernuda, ‘El testimonio flaviano’, 359–65. (Schmidt 2025, 71)
Cernuda believes that Josephus was in the company of some Roman Christians when he was writing Antiquities and these Christians pressed Josephus to include something about Jesus in his historical account. Josephus did so, Cernuda suggests, with a cheeky deceit:
This gives reason to think that the prominent Roman Christians who asked Josephus to include the episode of Jesus among the events of the time of Pilate also requested that he indicate his miraculous, virginal origin; and that the shrewd Jew complied by implying it as a secondary meaning . . . .
This double meaning was absolutely necessary for the ironic development Josephus intended and which we are trying to demonstrate. Only if this double sense — both positive and negative — of σοφός is kept in view can the following clarification be properly understood: εἴ γε ἄνδρα αὐτὸν λέγειν χρή = if indeed he should be called a man. The widely held view that this phrase comes from a Christian hand, because it implies the idea of divinity, is easily answered: a disciple of Christ would not have expressed himself in so vague a manner. On the contrary, if we accept the irony or semantic duplicity of σοφὸς ἀνήρ — “an eminent man” or “a clever type” — then the ambiguity of γε [my note: γε = indeed] (as either restrictive or affirmative) fits perfectly. To the Christians pressuring Josephus, the phrase could implicitly denote the divinity of Jesus, and they might have been satisfied with the formulation, recognizing that no more could be expected from a non-believer. But to the one who cunningly crafted the circumlocution, a latent scorn emerges clearly: is someone truly a man of honor who gains fame as σοφός, when in fact he is just clever — even a rogue? The exaltation of something that is in fact being despised is one of the classic signs of irony. And Josephus must have felt a deep aversion to Jesus and his persuasive power, as we recently observed in the study of Caiaphas’s conversion. (Cernuda 1997, 360f, 363f – translation, bolding and highlighting is my own)
So Cernuda posits a different scenario for how Josephus came to write a mischievously ambiguous line. For Cernuda, Josephus’s sources for Jesus were Christians; for Schmidt, his sources were prominent elderly Jews. Both suggest that Josephus was writing ambiguously.
For Cernuda, the ambiguity was a trick: Josephus was poking fun at the Christians by pretending to write something positive while really he was being sarcastic. Schmidt, though, is more gracious:
He did however insert a healthy amount of ambiguity, enough for one to draw several negative or positive inferences about Jesus. Whether this was because Josephus hoped to curry favor with an audience divided over their estimation of Jesus, or because he himself had no certain opinion of Jesus, or because his sources differed regarding Jesus, or because he admired Jesus but did not want to reveal his true feelings, or because he simply did not care, I cannot tell. (Schmidt 2025, 203)
Imagining Scenarios
The difference between Cernuda and Schmidt underscores the fact that both scholars are arguing on the basis of creatively imagining who Josephus was talking to or what conversations he was recalling at the time of his writing. I am reminded of Richard Bauckham’s tenuous links the authors of the gospels had to eyewitnesses of Jesus. (Godfrey 2008) What we are witnessing are ad hoc scenarios to explain why we should be convinced of the hypothesis that Josephus wrote the TF. Don’t misunderstand, though. Schmidt is very thorough, comprehensive and learned. He argues a case to justify his scenario. What I have shown in this one small part of his argument is that his case does not rest on secure foundations. There is much more to address. I am just getting started. More to follow.
An Uncertain Josephus
Till then, let’s conclude with a note on Schmidt’s personal conclusion about what Josephus meant by “if indeed one ought to call him a man”. In the end, he pulls the rug out from the entire notion of any sarcasm:
Whatever the case, the TF does not present Josephus as actually calling Jesus divine anyway, but only presents this as a potential possibility—as long as one does not interpret the statement more negatively. . . .
I am inclined to think that the phrase should be interpreted straightforwardly as Josephus expressing diffidence, uncertainty, or ambiguity regarding his personal estimation of Jesus, or on the other hand, he might instead have used the phrase as a way of acknowledging that Jesus was a polarizing figure among his readers, whatever Josephus’ own opinions may have been. (Schmidt 2025, 72, 73)
Does one normally depict a polarizing figure with a question over whether that figure was more or less than human? Is the phrase really nothing more than a “personal estimation of Jesus”? Hardly – it is a question about whether or not he is human! At least the interpretation that Josephus was being sarcastic hews more honestly to the meaning of the line.
If Josephus was being sarcastic he was not being neutral. His ambiguity was hidden from his Christian readers. If he was being neutral or disinterested over a polarizing figure, and if his sources were his Jewish peers, it is odd that he should be expressing confusion over whether Jesus was an angel or a demon. At least there is no evidence in the gospels — apart from Jesus’s words in Matthew 10:25 — that any Jews claimed he was a demon, and certainly none that he was divine. The only Jews who proclaimed the divinity of Jesus were the Christians and they were the “heretics” in the eyes of the Jews. Only by reading Acts as containing genuine history could we think otherwise, at least on the part of some non-Christian Jews. Not to mention that the whole question becomes even messier if the Gospels and Acts were all composed after Josephus.
Postscript – added about 2 hours after posting the above
One more point that Thomas Schmidt advances in support of Josephus having written “if indeed one ought to call him a man” is that the innuendo of those words would be heretical for early Christians:
The TF also makes claims that disagree with early Christian belief, such as how the TF wonders if Jesus was actually human (or less than human), when early Christians viewed denying Jesus’ humanity as heretical . . .
In this one must remember that Christian authors like Origen, Eusebius, and practically all others ardently felt that Jesus was in fact human. They consequently would have viewed any denials of his humanity as heretical. Therefore, most Christians—authors and scribes—would likely not have interpolated such a statement into the TF. (Schmidt 2025, 198, 71)
Here Schmidt is in effect contradicting his earlier argument that Josephus was drawing on Jewish memories of long ago controversies about Jesus, controversies that supposedly left their traces in the Gospels. There is no hint in any of the canonical Gospels that anyone, whether Christ followers or Jewish opponents, thought Jesus might not be human.
Furthermore, we cannot avoid noticing a certain orthodoxy bias in Schmidt’s argument here. By saying that “early Christians viewed denying Jesus’ humanity as heretical” Schmidt is excluding the possibility that the doctrines that became orthodox Christianity were a later development and that many of the earliest Christians did indeed view Jesus as a human in appearance only (cf. Philippians 2:7-8).
Bibliography
Cernuda, Antonio Vicent. 1997. “El Testimonio Flaviano, Alarde De Solapada Ironía.” Estudios Bíblicos 55 (3, 4): 355–85, 479–508.
Funk, Robert W., Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar. 1993. The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus: New Translation and Commentary. New York: Polebridge Press.
Godfrey, Neil. 2008. “Bauckham: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” Vridar (blog). January 23, 2007 to June 4, 2008 [=58 posts]. https://vridar.org/tag/bauckham-jesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/.
Schmidt, T. C. 2025. Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191957697.001.0001.
I have compiled the three parts into a single file. Make whatever use you want of it. Copy it; share it. I only ask that you acknowledge its source on this blog as per the Creative Commons licence for all works here. Frank Feller was the translator but I refined his work here and there into more fluent English. Find the Download Button beneath the viewing frame.
All the same notes apply re my modifications of some sections of the translation, additional notes and hyperlinks.
3. Tacitus and Josephus
The word “Christianos” – with an “e” scraped and replaced with an “I” – as it appears In Madicean II under ultraviolet light. From UU Humanist Skeptic
The information we get from Ehrman about Tacitus and the Testimonium Taciteum, which he highly values, on 2 (two!) pages of the book is not enough to keep skin and bones together. We are only briefly informed about the content and the historical background of this testimony, but about the problems with it Ehrman has almost nothing at all to say. Ehrman speaks of the Roman historian Tacitus and his “famous Annals of Imperial Rome in 115 CE” (p. 54) and the passage that reports on the burning of Rome and the subsequent persecution of Christians by the Emperor Nero. According to Ehrman, Tacitus is said to have considered Nero the arsonist, but this is not true. If Ehrman had studied the text more thoroughly, he would have noticed that although Tacitus assumes that Nero was interested in the burning of Rome, he leaves the question of guilt in the balance – unlike Suetonius, to which Ehrman presumably refers. In any case, there are mass executions of Christians, here called “Chrestiani“, some of whom are torn apart by wild dogs and others burned alive to illuminate the imperial park at night. In this context, there is now also talk about the author of this name, Christ (the “Chrestus”, as the magnifying glass on the cover of this website shows), who was “put to death by the procurator, Pontius Pilate, while Tiberius was emperor; but the dangerous superstition, though suppressed for the moment, broke out again not only in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.”
Ehrman sees here a testimony to the historicity of Jesus, even though he admits that the text does not speak of Jesus but of Christ and that it is based on Christian sources. Moreover, Ehrman suggests that some mythicists argue that the Testimonium Taciteum was not written by Tacitus but interpolated “by Christians, who copied them [Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius]” (p. 55).
Unfortunately, however, he keeps the arguments they put forward for this viewpoint to himself – if he knows them at all. Ehrman considers these arguments to be a merely a trick to explain everything that doesn’t fit the bill as a later falsification.
Ehrman does not need to be convinced by this argument. But he should at least know it so that he can deal with it.
However, the radical critics who speak of interpolation will certainly have given reasons. What are they?
Since Ehrman remains stubbornly silent, let’s name a few. They arise from a (literary-critical) consideration of the context in which the passage of Tacitus is embedded. The 42-43rd chapter was about Nero’s lively building activity. After the fire in Rome, the emperor first used the situation to create new parks and gardens, and then to build houses and apartments according to a new, more spacious design. Chap. 45 continues this theme after the section on the persecution of Christians with an introductory “interea” (meanwhile). Now it is emphasized that the money for the building projects came primarily from the provinces and that even some temples in Rome were robbed of their gold to finance the emperor’s projects.
The text that has been handed down thus offers an extremely strange train of thought: Nero has the Christians burned, the people have pity on them – “meanwhile” (interea) the Roman Empire is being plundered. It is obvious that such a nonsensical train of thought could by no means have been the intention of the narrator. Between chapters 44 and 45 there is no connecting point to which the “interea” could refer. If it is to establish a meaningful connection, it can, in terms of content, only tie up to Ch. 43 but not to 44: Rome is being rebuilt – in the meantime the empire is being plundered for it! Ehrman does not need to be convinced by this argument. But he should at least know it so that he can deal with it. Continue reading “Prof. “Errorman” and the non-Christian sources — Part 3: Tacitus and Josephus”
I discuss here my reading of Chapter 5 of Raphael Lataster’s Questioning the Historicity of Jesus. Here he looks at the problematic nature of the gospels and extra-biblical sources for Jesus.
Lataster discusses how historical Jesus scholars attempt to get around the problem that there are no primary sources for a historical Jesus. This absence leads scholars to focus on
1) the character and limitations of presumed oral traditions that bridge the gap between the gospels and the historical Jesus;
2) memory theory, what we theorize and know about social and individual memories.
Both of these studies do indeed raise awareness of problems for a historian’s access to a historical Jesus and Lataster cites numerous scholars who have contributed to our awareness of these problems. I suggest, however, that much of the discussion is at best a footnote to a debate over whether there was a person of Jesus at the start of Christianity. After all, the problems relate to the reconstruction of such a Jesus. If Christianity had some other origin then memories or oral traditions cannot have any relation to “a historical Jesus”.
The most famous extra-biblical reference to a historical Jesus is the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus. Lataster’s discussion is a thorough coverage of the weaknesses of attempts to salvage even a smaller core of the surviving sentences, again citing a range of recent scholars who have expressed serious reservations about Josephus ever having said anything at all about our Jesus. I was pleased to see a detailed quotation from a publication by a distinguished professor in the field of linguistics, Paul Hopper. (Interested readers can see the quotation in an older post here.) As for the second passage in the Antiquities of Josephus, one which appears to be an after-thought reference to a Jesus related to a certain James, Lataster highlights Richard Carrier’s argument that the Jesus referred to is Jesus son of Damneus. (See David Fitzgerald Responds for details of the argument.) Carrier’s view makes some sense but I am not entirely sure it resolves all questions and for that reason I prefer Earl Doherty’s original discussion as the more satisfactory. But either way, there are significant problems with the view that Josephus identified James as “the brother of Jesus, the one called Christ”, both in syntax and context. It is important to address both Josephan passages but as Lataster notes,
it is important to realise that even if authentic, these verses do not necessarily confirm the existence of the Historical Jesus.
(Lataster, p. 200)
Josephus is writing decades after the supposed historical Jesus and adds nothing to what is known from other sources, the implication being that there is no reason to suspect that either passage had any source other than Christians, either as Josephus’s late first century source or as later copyists of his work.
Other sources
Lataster’s comprehensive discussions of other ancient sources mentioning or interpreted as alluding to either Jesus or Christ — Tacitus, Pliny, Thallus, Suetonius, Mara bar Serapion, and the Talmud — draw in both scholarly rebuttals and common answers that as far as I am aware have never been countered by anyone attempting to use them as evidence for a historical Jesus. A new point concerning Pliny’s letter about Christians to emperor Trajan is also covered: Enrico Tuccinardi has applied a stylometric analysis that strongly indicates the entire passage is a forgery.
Scholarly “confessions”
As for the canonical gospels, Lataster reminds us of the major obstacles to accepting them as sources for a historical Jesus. They are late documents, at least forty years after the narrated crucifixion, and they are accepted by critical biblical scholars as mythical or theological narratives of Christ, not a historical person. Whatever the form of Jesus behind them — historical or mythical — they are nonhistorical elaborations that have come to hide whatever that original concept was. Lataster buttresses his point with citations from critical biblical scholars. One such noteworthy name is that of the pioneer of the Jesus Seminar, Robert Funk:
As an historian, I do not know for certain that Jesus really existed, that he is anything more than the figment of some overactive imaginations… In my view, there is nothing about Jesus of Nazareth that we can know beyond any possible doubt. In the mortal life we have there are only prob abilities. And the Jesus that scholars have isolated in the ancient gospels, gospels that are bloated with the will to believe, may turn out to be only another image that merely reflects our deepest longings.
(Robert Walter Funk, “Bookshelf: The Resurrection of Jesus,” The Fourth R 8, no. 1 (1995): 9., in Lataster, p. 219)
Given the prevailing near consensus that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest gospel it is reasonable to consider the possibility that all subsequent references to and portrayals of a historical Jesus can go back to that gospel. Lataster cites Bart Ehrman to this effect:
If there had been one source of Christian antiquity that mentioned a historical Jesus (e.g., Mark) and everyone else was based on what that source had to say, then possibly you could argue that this person made Jesus up and everyone else simply took the ball and ran with it.
(Lataster, p. 220, citing Erhman from https://ehrmanblog.org/gospel-evidence-that-jesus-existed, accessed 05/04/2017.)
What if the Testimonium Flavianum, the passage about Jesus and his followers, in Antiquities by Josephus was written in full (or maybe with the exception of no more than 3 words) by Josephus? I know that would raise many questions about the nature of the rest of our sources but let’s imagine the authenticity of the passage in isolation from everything else for now.
What if the passage about Christ in Tacitus was indeed written by Tacitus? Ditto about that raising more questions as above, but the same.
What if even the author attribution studies that have demonstrated the very strong likelihood that Pliny’s letter about Christians to Trajan was not written by Pliny were wrong after all?
What if that “pocket gospel” in the early part of chapter 11 of the Ascension of Isaiah were original to the text and not a subsequent addition? (I think that the most recent scholarly commentary by Enrico Norelli on the Ascension of Isaiah does actually suggest that scenario but I have not read any of the justifications if that is the case.)
What if 2 Thessalonians 2:13-16 which has Paul saying the Jews themselves killed Jesus in Judea was indeed written by Paul thus adding one more inconsistency of Paul’s thought to the already high pile?
What if, contrary to what has been argued in a work opposing (sic) the Christ Myth hypothesis, the passage about Paul meeting James the brother of the Lord was originally penned by Paul after all?
Would the above Imagine scenarios collectively remove any reason to question the assertion that Christianity began ultimately with a historical Jesus?
I have collated 21 Vridar posts on the Testimonium Flavianum into a single page of annotated links. See the ARCHIVES by TOPIC, Annotated in the right margin. Look under Pages.
An email update this morning informs me that linguist Paul Hopper has uploaded to his academia.edu page another copy of his earlier paper, A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii:631, that was published in 2014 in Linguisitics and Literary Studies. There is now a new link to the paper. The paper is a few years old now and I’ve posted about it before but no matter at all: the email notice this morning gives me another opportunity to bring it to the attention of readers not aware of it.
After a detailed discussion of verbal forms in the Testimonium Flavianum passage compared with those in the adjacent Pilate episodes we move to a discussion of the “macrolevel” of narrative structure. (I have added bolding to and changed some of the layout of the original text.)
The Aquifer episode
But Pilate undertook to bring a current of water to Jerusalem, and did it with the sacred money, and derived the origin of the stream from the distance of two hundred furlongs. However, the Jews were not pleased with what had been done about this water; and many ten thousands of the people got together, and made a clamor against him, and insisted that he should leave off that design. Some of them also used reproaches, and abused the man, as crowds of such people usually do. So he habited a great number of his soldiers in their habit, who carried daggers under their garments, and sent them to a place where they might surround them. So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition. — Antiquities, 18, 3, 2.
The time organization in the Testimonium is strikingly different from that of the surrounding text. For example, the narrative of the Aquifer [see box right] is filled with particular details –
the rioters shouting insults,
the Roman soldiers going among the crowd in Jewish dress,
the order to the demonstrators to disperse,
the overreaction of the soldiers,
and the bloody suppression of the riot.
At each point we know not only what the actors did, but why they did it, and what the causes and effects of their actions were. The Aquifer episode, like the other episodes involving Pontius Pilate, has an event structure. Time in these episodes is kairotic, that is, it is qualitative time (kairos) experienced by individual actors.9 . . . .
By contrast, the temporality of the Testimonium is chronic (chronos), that is, it is part of the general temporality of human history. It takes place in a more remote perspective of slow changes and general truths; it is temps conjoncturel, the time of social movements and social reorganization. It has a bird’s-eye view of its subject, scanning the entire life of Jesus and his influence in no particular order, anachronistically (Genette 1980:34). . . . . So the Testimonium belongs to a different kind of time from the rest of the Jewish Antiquities. The temporality of the Testimonium derives from its presumed familiarity to its audience, which in turn is more compatible with a third century or later Christian setting than a first century Roman one. . . . .
The next point is a comparison of the Testimonium‘s “emplotment” with the preceding Pilate episodes.
The Aquifer story is a narration in which a situation is established and the characters interact, and there is a resolution. It has a plot in the way that recent narrative theorists have stipulated. . . . The same is true of the other two Pilate episodes. . . . . The careful crafting of emplotment is an essential part of Josephus’s skill as a historian.
The Testimonium has no such plot. From the point of view of its place in Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, it does not qualify as a narrative at all. The Testimonium could not be understood as a story except by someone who could already place it in its “intelligible whole”, the context of early Christianity. The Testimonium gains its intelligibility not through its reporting of novel events but by virtue of being a “repetition of the familiar” (Ricoeur 1981:67) – familiarity here meaning familiarity to a third century Christian readership, not to a first century Roman one.The “intelligible whole” posited by Ricoeur as the indispensable foundation for a story does not lie, as it does for the other events told by Josephus in this part of the Jewish Antiquities, in the larger narrative of the interlocking destinies of Rome and Jerusalem, but instead in the Gospel story of the Christian New Testament, and it is from the Gospels, and the Gospels alone, that the Jesus Christ narrative in the Testimonium draws its coherence and its legitimacy as a plot, and perhaps even some of its language. It is not just that the Christian origin of the Testimonium is betrayed by its allegiance to the Gospels, as that without the Gospels the passage is incomprehensible. Once again to draw on Paul Ricoeur, the Testimonium does not so much narrate to first century Romans new events, but rather reminds third century Christians of events already familiar to them.
And then a look at genre, and a comparison between the TF and credal formulas vis a vis the historical narrative of Josephus.
The Testimonium is anchored in a radically different discourse community from that of the rest of the Jewish Antiquities. The Testimonium reads more like a position paper, a party manifesto, than a narrative. Unlike the rest of the Jewish Antiquities, it has the same generic ambiguity between myth and history that Kermode (1979) has noted in the Gospels as a whole. . . . . It is, in other words, a political interpolation. It serves to validate the Christian claim of the crucifixion of the sect’s founder during Pilate’s administration, and, by positioning its text within that of the genre “history”, with its ethos of truth, to warrant the historical authenticity of the Gospels. But told as a series of new events to a first century Roman audience unfamiliar with it, the Testimonium would have been a bizarre addition and probably quite unintelligible.
The 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, (9) those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; (10) 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. — Antiquities, 18, 3, 3.
The Testimonium Flavianum qualifies poorly as an example of either history or narrative. Where, then, does it fit generically? The closest generic match for the Testimonium is perhaps the various creeds that began to be formulated in the early fourth century, such as the Nicene Creed (325 CE).10 Some credal elements are clearly present:
Jesus was the Messiah;
he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (passus sub Pontio Pilato, in the words of the Apostles’ Creed);
he came back to life on the third day after his death;
the movement founded by him – the Christian church – continues to flourish;
he performed miracles;
the biblical prophets foretold many details of his life.
Less specifically credal, but similar in character to the creeds, are its length (77 Greek words, comparable to the 76 words of the Latin Apostles’ Creed and the 91 words of the Greek Apostles’ Creed)11 and the sycophantic tone of the confirmed believer (“had a following among both Jews and Gentiles”, “appeared to them alive after the third day”, “the biblical prophets foretold his many miracles”). The unmotivated introduction of Jesus immediately after the openingginetai (“there happened”) is also structurally reminiscent of credal formulas such as credo in unum deum etc.
. . . . . . The Testimonium reflects what had by the third century CE become a commonplace of Christianity: that culpability for the death of Jesus rested with the Jews.12 It is made clear in the Testimonium that Pilate’s agency is indirect: the true agents are “the first men among us”, the Jewish leaders who effect the “indictment” of Jesus, Pilate’s role being limited to pronouncing the death sentence. The “among us” is unequivocal: responsibility for the death of Jesus lies with Josephus’s fellow-countrymen, the Jews, not with the Romans, and in this too the Testimonium is hard to reconcile with Josephus’s denunciation of Pilate’s crimes against the Jews. The Josephus of the Testimonium is represented as aligning himself with the Christians (versus the Jews) and admitting that the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah lies with the Jews; it need hardly be said that such an admission on Josephus’s part is inconceivable.
But the above is taken from only the last three pages of Paul Hopper’s twenty plus page article. See the link below to download the paper or read it online.
Hopper, Paul. 2014. “A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii:63.” In Linguistics and Literary Studies / Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, edited by Monika Fludernik and Daniel Jacob, Bilingual edition, 147–69. Linguae & Litterae, Book 31. Berlin ; Boston: De Gruyter. https://www.academia.edu/37321029/A_Narrative_Anomaly_in_Josephus_Jewish_Antiquities_xviii_63.
When I consulted my reading notes for the recent post on Case’s The Historicity of Jesus, I noticed a couple of things I had meant to comment on, but left out. In this post I seek to atone for my sins of omission.
A volume on linguistics and literary studies published last year contained a chapter by Paul Hopper, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, titled A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii:63. The chapter can now be downloaded from academia.edu. (I was alerted to this through a post by Peter Kirby on Biblical Criticism & History Forum.)
Here is the abstract of the chapter:
Abstract: Josephus in the Jewish Antiquities introduces Jesus the Messiah into his history of the Jews, and appears to report events corresponding closely to those of the Gospels, including Jesus’s crucifixion on the orders of Pontius Pilate. A longstanding dispute exists about the authenticity of this text. The present article offers a narratological analysis of the passage, comparing the styles of event reporting in the passage with the three other episodes in Josephus’s Pontius Pilate sequence. The study concludes that the uses of the Greek verb forms such as aorists and participles are distinct in the Jesus passage from those in the other Pilate episodes, and that these differences amount to a difference in genre. It is suggested that the Jesus passage is close in style and content to the creeds that were composed two to three centuries after Josephus.(my bolding in all quotations)
Tim O’Neill (TO) rightly says of some of the evidence for the historical existence of Jesus:
After all, no-one except a fundamentalist apologist would pretend that the evidence about Jesus is not ambiguous and often difficult to interpret with any certainty, and that includes the evidence for his existence. (O’Neill, 2011)
Yet curiously not a single aspect of evidence addressed by either David Fitzgerald (DF) or himself in his reviews of DF’s work has hit on anything that he finds ambiguous or difficult to interpret. In every point of disagreement TO suggests DF is nothing but a liar or a fool.
The first unambiguous retort TO makes to DF’s treatment of Josephus is the dogmatic assertion that Josephus mentions Jesus twice. No argument. No ambiguity. No uncertainty.
Josephus does mention Jesus – twice. So any Myther book or article[arguing the Christ Myth thesis] has to spill a lot of ink trying to explain these highly inconvenient mentions away.
Then again,
[T]he passage has Josephus saying things about Jesus that no Jewish non-Christian would say, such as “He was the Messiah” and “he appeared to them alive on the third day”. So, not surprisingly, Fitzgerald takes the usual Myther [Christ Myth] tack and rejects the whole passage as a later addition and rejects the idea that Josephus mentioned Jesus here at all.
Interpolation a “mythicist” argument?
This is most curious. The actual fact is that most mainstream scholars until after the Second World War generally agreed that the entire passage was an interpolation. Or if not entirely an interpolation, the fact that it had been tampered with at all rendered it useless as historical evidence. I have quoted the evidence for the prevalence of these views in my post, What they used to say about Josephus as evidence for Jesus.
Today, however, it seems that “the majority of scholars” accept the contrary view, that Josephus did indeed say something about Jesus beneath the obvious Christian overlay. Given that most New Testament scholars are ideologically predisposed to belief in Jesus, and that Josephus’s testimony is the only non-biblical evidence we have from the first century for Jesus, I would not be surprised if a majority did think this. But so what? If a significant minority still leans towards the view that the entire Josephan passages is a forgery or useless as evidence, then it hardly seems reasonable to dismiss this view as the preserve of Christ Myth supporters.
Sociological explanation for the revised view of Josephus as evidence
The evidence is essentially the same. (Although in 1971 Arabic and Syriac versions of the Testimonium were also brought to light.) What has changed are the trends in interpretation of the evidence.
In fact, much of the past impetus for labeling the textus receptus Testimonium a forgery has been based on earlier scholars’ anachronistic assumptions that, as a Jew, Josephus could not have written anything favorable about Jesus. Contemporary scholars of primitive Christianity are less inclined than past scholars to assume that most first-century Jews necessarily held hostile opinions of Jesus, and they are more aware that the line between Christians and non-Christian Jews in Josephus’ day was not as firm as it would later become. (p. 575)
This says loads. It is a virtual confession that the shift in interpretation has been motivated to a significant extent as a reaction against both real and perceived strains of anti-semitism in earlier scholarship. The error here is that the personal bias and values of Josephus himself are trumped by an impulse to undo an earlier generation’s sins of negative stereotyping. The context in which the passage occurs is also bypassed. Josephus personally loathed any movement that stood in opposition to the political and religious status quo under Roman rule. Taking seriously both the personal bias of Josephus and the context in which the Testimonium Flavianum is found (it is in a list of calamities befalling the Jews in which the TF fits as comfortably as a pimple on one’s nose), even the so-called “neutral” core of that TF is problematic. Continue reading “O’Neill-Fitzgerald “Christ Myth” Debate, #10: Josephus as Evidence & the Arabic Version of the Testimonium”
Tim O’Neill (TO) expresses a most worthy ideal in an exchange with David Fitzgerald (DF):
What a careful, honest or even just competent treatment of the subject would do would be to deal with all relevant positions throughout the analysis . . . (O’Neill, 2013)
One would expect to find in TO’s review of DF’s book, Nailed!, therefore, at the very least, an honest acknowledgement of arguments in that book. Unfortunately anyone reading TO’s review would have no idea of DF’s overall argument on any point TO chooses to address.
Since I began these posts taking the trouble to expose TO’s bluff, ignorance and pretentious nonsense, the good man himself has responded by saying my posts are “nitpicking” and symptoms of a man “obsessed with him”. I can only smile with contentment over a job done reasonably well if that’s the best his vanity can muster in his defence.
Now it’s time to address TO’s criticism of DF’s discussion of the evidence of Josephus for the historicity of Jesus. This will take a few posts to complete. Let’s begin the way any honest reviewer of a work should always begin — that is, set out the arguments of the author one is reviewing. Since TO forgot this step I will outline the first of DF’s points here, and then we will compare TO’s initial critique.
I hope that these posts will have more value than they might if they were nothing more than responses to TO’s nonsense. Hopefully issues and arguments will be raised that some readers will find informative for their own sake.
DF’s chapter 3 is titled “Myth No. 3: Josephus Wrote About Jesus”. The first passage he addresses is the famous “Testimonium Flavianum” from book 18 of the Jewish historian’s Antiquities of the Jews. It translates as:
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.
Sixteen rebuttal arguments against authenticity of the TF are presented. But the question of authenticity is shown to be only one of the “problems with Josephus” regarding the historical Jesus.
