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Over the years, when editors and journalists have asked me to write about the historical Jesus, almost invariably the first question they raise is: Can you really prove he existed? The implication is that the biblical evidence for Jesus is biased because it is encased in a theological text written by committed believers.
What they really want to know is: Is there extra-biblical evidence from the first century A.D. for Jesus’ existence?
Although most people are unaware of it, the answer is yes. Moreover, in all probability this extra-biblical evidence not only provides evidence of Jesus’ existence, but, as I shall try to show, includes a number of salient facts about his life that confirm the basic outlines of the four canonical Gospels.
The author of this extra-biblical evidence is Flavius Josephus, a fascinating figure in his own right. Josephus ben Mattathias (born 37/38 A.D., died after 022100 A.D.) was by turns a Jewish aristocrat, a priestly politician, a not-so-eager commander of rebel troops in Galilee during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–73 A.D.), a tricky turncoat, a Jewish historian in the pay of the Flavian emperors and a supposed Pharisee. Captured by Vespasian in 67, he served the Romans as mediator and interpreter during the rest of the revolt. Brought to Rome, he composed there two great works: The Jewish War, written in the early 70s, and the much longer Jewish Antiquities, finished about 93–94.
In the full-length history of his people, Jewish Antiquities, Josephus twice refers to Jesus, once in passing and a second time in a much-disputed passage known to scholars as the Testimonium Flavianum (that is, the supposed Testimony of Flavius to Jesus), or Testimonium for short.
Before looking at these two passages, however, let us look at a passage from Josephus’ other great work, The Jewish War, which is a detailed account of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. In that book, there is also a reference to Jesus that gives a précis of his ministry and death. However, it is so clearly spurious that it can be quickly and easily dismissed. But it does illustrate the kinds of problems that can arise and the way scholars approach a text. The passage does not appear in any of the surviving Greek manuscripts of The Jewish War, but only in the Old Russian translation popularly known as the Slavonic version of The Jewish War, which was a compilation made in the 10th or 11th century. The absence of the passage in the Greek manuscripts immediately makes the passage suspect. In the Slavonic version, the passage is a wildly garbled condensation of various Gospel events, seasoned with the sort of bizarre legendary expansions found in apocryphal gospels and acts of the second and third centuries (see the second sidebar to this article, for text). This passage from The Jewish War is disregarded by virtually all scholars today, but it shows the kind of tampering with texts that could, and did, occur.
Let us turn now to the two passages from Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. There is little doubt as to the authenticity of one of the passages. The fact that it contains only a passing reference to Jesus is itself a factor that is at least consistent with its authenticity. It is a short passage, occurring just after Josephus describes the death of the procurator Festus and the appointment of Albinus as his successor in 62 A.D. While Albinus was still on his way to Palestine, the high priest Ananus the Younger convened the Sanhedrin without the procurator’s consent. With the help of the Sanhedrin, Ananus had certain enemies put to death. The key passage (Jewish Antiquities 20.9.1 [Sec. 200]) reads:
“Ananus, thinking that he had a favorable opportunity because Festus had died and Albinus was still on his way, called a meeting [literally, sanhedrin] of judges and brought into it the brother of Jesus-who-called-Messiah [ton adelphon
Ieµsou tou legomenou Christou], James by name, and some others. He made the accusation that they had transgressed the law, and he handed them over to be stoned.”1
Here we have only a passing, almost blasé reference to someone called James, whom Josephus obviously considers a minor character. He is mentioned only because his illegal execution causes the high priest Ananus to be deposed. The Greek form of James is
This leads to another significant point: The way the text identifies James is not likely to have come from a Christian source. Neither the New Testament nor early Christian writers spoke of James of Jerusalem in a matter-of-fact way as “the brother of Jesus” (ho adelphos
The point of all this is that Josephus’ designation of James as “the brother of Jesus” squares neither with New Testament usage nor with early patristic, usage, and so is not likely to have come from the hand of a Christian interpolator. As one commentator has recently noted, “If a Christian forger had 023inserted a reference to Jesus, he would scarcely have been content to mention Jesus in such noncommittal fashion.”4
There are other, more technical, reasons for believing this passage to be genuine: The account of James’ death here differs from what was apparently the standard Christian version of late antiquity. This of course makes it more likely that the passage is genuine Josephus and less likely that it is a late Christian interpolation. The fact that a passage, in a part not quoted, refers to the Sadducees as “heartless” or “ruthless” accords with Josephus’ pro-Pharisaic sympathies and is therefore consistent with the authenticity of the passage.
In short, as the great Josephus scholar Louis H. Feldman has noted: “Few have doubted the genuineness of this passage.”5
There is far less agreement among scholars, however, concerning the Testimonium, which is quoted in the first sidebar to this article. Very few scholars would defend it as it stands. Some scholars would throw out the whole thing as a wholesale Christian interpolation; this, however, is a distinctly minority view. Most recent opinion is that the passage does contain an authentic Josephan substratum. It is significant that among those who take this position are Jewish scholars Paul Winter and Louis H. Feldman, the hardly orthodox Christian scholars S. G. F. Brandon and Morton Smith, mainline Protestant scholar James M. Charlesworth and Catholic scholars Carlo M. Martini, Wolfgang Trilling and A.-M. Dubarle.
I agree with these scholars. However, I am prepared to go a bit further. I believe that the passage has been tampered with, but it is possible to identify and eliminate three Christian interpolations. This leaves us with Josephus’ authentic account, with no need to rewrite any words in his original text.
Three clauses or sentences in the Testimonium immediately strike the reader as obviously Christian. In the sidebar containing the Testimonium, I have italicized these three elements. Let us consider each of them:
1. The first—if indeed one should call him a man—modifies the previous designation of Jesus as simply a wise man. A Christian scribe would not deny that Jesus was a wise man, but would feel that label insufficient for one who was believed to be God as well as man.
2. The second—He was the Messiah—is clearly a Christian profession of faith. This is something that Josephus, himself a Jew, would never affirm. Moreover, this statement seems out of place in its present position and disturbs the flow of thought. If it were present at all, one would expect it to occur immediately after either “Jesus” or “wise man,” where the further identification would make sense.
3. The third passage, an affirmation of an appearance of Jesus after his death—For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him—is also clearly a Christian profession of faith. It even includes a creedal “proof from Scripture” (“just as the divine prophets had spoken”).
These three passages not only have a distinctly Christian flavor, but it is precisely these three Christian passages that interrupt the flow of what is otherwise a concise text carefully written in a fairly neutral—or even purposely ambiguous—tone. Read the Testimonium without the italicized passages and you will see that the flow of thought is clear. Josephus calls Jesus by the generic title “wise man” (sophos
A number of other considerations suggest that the Testimonium as pared down is Josephan.
First, the other reference to Jesus in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, the one that almost all agree is authentic, seems to imply some previous reference to 024Jesus. As we have seen, that other reference appears in Book 20. The identification of James as “the brother of Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah” seems to assume that Jesus has been previously identified at greater length. In any event, Josephus does not feel that he must stop to explain who this Jesus is; Jesus is presumed to be the known person who helps identify James. This would make no sense to Josephus’ audience unless Josephus had previously introduced Jesus and explained something about him.
Equally important, the vocabulary and grammar of the Testimonium (after the clearly Christian material is deleted) cohere well with Josephus’ style and language, but do not do so with the New Testament style. Indeed, many key words and phrases in the Testimonium are either absent from the New Testament or are used there in an entirely different sense; in contrast, almost every word in the core of the Testimonium is found elsewhere in Josephus—in fact, most of the vocabulary turns out to be characteristic of Josephus. On the other hand, all the words in the three Christian insertions occur at least once in the New Testament.
This comparison between Josephus and the New Testament does not provide an unquestionable solution to the problem of authenticity, but it does force us to ask which of two possible scenarios is more probable. Did a Christian of some unknown century so immerse himself in the vocabulary and style of Josephus that, without the aid of any modern dictionaries and concordances, he was able to strip himself of the New Testament vocabulary with which he would naturally speak of Jesus and to reproduce perfectly the Greek of Josephus for most of the Testimonium? Or is it more likely that the core statement, which we first isolated simply by extracting what would strike anyone at first glance as Christian affirmations, and which is written in typically Josephan vocabulary that diverged from the usage of the New Testament, was in fact written by Josephus himself? Of the two scenarios, I find the second much more probable.
Finally, an examination of the content of the core statement—absent the clear Christian interpolations—further buttresses my argument. For example, the “christology” of the core statement is extremely low. Without the three Christian passages, the description of Jesus is conceivable in the mouth of a Jew who is not openly hostile to him, but it is not conceivable in the mouth of an ancient or medieval Christian. The statement that Jesus “won over” or “gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin” flies in the face of the overall description of Jesus’ ministry in the four Gospels, where Jesus does not pursue a formal mission to gentiles and comes into direct 025contact with very few of them.
The Josephan description of the trial and condemnation of Jesus is also curious when compared to the four Gospels. All four Gospels give explicit reasons why first the Jewish authorities and then Pilate decide that Jesus should be put to death. For the Jewish leaders, the grounds are theological: Jesus claims to be the Messiah and Son of God. For Pilate, the question is basically political: Does Jesus claim to be the king of the Jews? The grounds are explicated differently in different Gospel texts, but grounds there are. The Testimonium is strangely silent on why Jesus is put to death. Whatever the reason for the omission, the Testimonium does not reflect a Christian way of treating the question of why Jesus was condemned to death; indeed, the question simply is not raised.
Moreover, the treatment of the part played by the Jewish authorities does not jibe with the picture in the Gospels. Whether or not it is true that the Gospels exhibit an increasing tendency to blame the Jews and exonerate the Romans, the Jewish authorities in the four Gospels carry a great deal of responsibility—either by way of the formal trial(s) by the Sanhedrin in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) or by way of the Realpolitik plotting of Caiaphas and the Jerusalem authorities, even before the hearings before Annas and Caiaphas, in John’s Gospel. Of course, a later Christian believer, reading the four Gospels, would tend to conflate all four accounts, which would only heighten Jewish participation—something only too gladly indulged in by many patristic writers in their rabid anti-Jewish 045polemics. All the stranger, therefore, is the Testimonium’s quick, laconic reference to the “denunciation” or “accusation” that the Jewish leaders make before Pilate; Pilate alone, however, is said to condemn Jesus to the cross. Not a word is said about the Jewish authorities passing any sort of sentence. Unless we are to think that some patristic or medieval Christian undertook a historical-critical investigation of the passion narratives of the four Gospels and decided, à la Paul Winter, that behind John’s narrative lay the historical truth of a brief hearing by some Jewish official before Jesus was handed over to Pilate, this description of Jesus’ condemnation cannot stem from the four Gospels—and certainly not from early Christian expansions on them, which were fiercely anti-Jewish.
Another curiosity in the core of the Testimonium is the concluding statement that “until this very day the tribe of Christians … has not died out.” I do not attribute anything pejorative to the word “tribe” (phylon); Josephus uses it elsewhere of the Jews themselves. But the statement does seem to imply surprise. I detect in the sentence as a whole something dismissive, if not hostile (though any hostility here is aimed at the Christians, not Jesus): One would have thought that by now this “tribe” of lovers of a crucified man might have disappeared. This does not sound like an interpolation by a Christian of any stripe.
All these circumstances suggest the authenticity of the core text, shorn of the obvious Christian interpolations.
Elsewhere in the Antiquities, Josephus provides us with longer narrative concerning John the Baptist (Jewish Antiquities 18.5.2). He describes John as a preacher of virtuous living who sealed his followers’ commitment to the moral life with the ritual of baptism. John’s great influence on the crowds alarmed Herod Antipas, who feared a rebellion. Herod had John imprisoned in the fortress of Machaerus and then put to death. This text is accepted as authentic by almost all scholars. The passage about John the Baptist is wholly unrelated to the passage about Jesus—the opposite of what we would expect if the Testimonium were a Christian interpolation.
Moreover, the Testimonium (referring to Jesus) precedes the passage concerning John. This order is the opposite of what we find in the New Testament. In Josephus, John the Baptist seems the more important. This contradicts the New Testament portrait of the Baptist, who is always treated briefly as the forerunner of the main character, Jesus.
Thus, viewed as a whole, the treatment of Jesus and John in book 18 of Jewish Antiquities is simply inconceivable as the work of a Christian of any period.
In short, what is remarkable about the Testimonium (after deleting the clear Christian interpolations) is that, without the slightest alteration, it flows smoothly, coheres with Josephus’ vocabulary and style, and makes perfect sense in his mouth.
The mere existence of Jesus can be established in an extra-biblical source from the neutral, passing reference to Jesus in Josephus’ report of James’ death in book 20. In the more extensive Testimonium, however, we see that Josephus was acquainted with at least a few salient facts of Jesus’ life. Independent of the four Gospels, yet confirming their basic presentation, a Jew writing in the years 93–94 tells us that during the rule of Pontius Pilate (the referent of “this time”; thus between 26–36 A.D.), there appeared on the religious scene of Palestine a man named Jesus. He had a reputation for wisdom that displayed itself in miracle working and teaching. He won a large following, but (or therefore?) the Jewish leaders accused him before Pilate. Pilate had him crucified, but Jesus’ ardent followers refused to abandon their devotion to him, despite his shameful death. Named Christians after this Jesus, who is called Christ, they continue in existence down to Josephus’ day. This neutral, or ambiguous, or perhaps somewhat dismissive tone probably explains why a later interpolator, or interpolators, added Christian affirmations.6
Jesus of Nazareth was a marginal Jew in a marginal province at the far eastern end of the Roman empire. At first thought it may seem strange that Josephus, a more prominent Jew of the first century in no way connected with this marginal Jew’s followers, should have preserved a thumbnail sketch of “Jesus-who-is-called-Messiah.” But practically no one is astounded or refuses to believe that in the same work Josephus gives us a longer sketch of another marginal Jew, another peculiar religious leader in Palestine, “John surnamed the Baptist.” Fortunately, Josephus had more than a passing interest in marginal Jews.7
Over the years, when editors and journalists have asked me to write about the historical Jesus, almost invariably the first question they raise is: Can you really prove he existed? The implication is that the biblical evidence for Jesus is biased because it is encased in a theological text written by committed believers.
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Endnotes
Paul Winter, quoted in Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–1986), vol. 1, p. 431.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, transl. Louis H. Feldman, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965), vol. 9, p. 496n.
This also explains why early Christian writers (especially the apologists of the second century) passed over the Testimonium in silence and why Origen complained that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Christ.