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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > June 1991

The Testimonium

Evidence for Jesus outside the Bible

By John P. Meier

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

1.

All translations from Josephus are my own.

2.

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.23.1.

3.

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 2.23.4.

4.

Paul Winter, quoted in Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–1986), vol. 1, p. 431.

5.

Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, transl. Louis H. Feldman, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965), vol. 9, p. 496n.

6.

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.

7.

For further details, see John P. Meier, “Jesus in Josephus: A Modest Proposal,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 52 (1990), pp. 76–103.