Right -so Josephus :)
For those who don't know, he's considered the most important extra-Biblical source that the Christians have.
Yet again, he was not a contemporary of Jesus, since he was born after Jesus supposedly died, but he's pretty close and SHOULD be a very valuable source of information.
He was native of Judea and prior to the war in 70AD had been the governor of Galilee - the very province that Jesus did all his amazing stuff in. At one point he even lived in Cana, where Jesus was meant to have performed his very first miracle.
This, people, should be the man who could gives us clues to Jesus.
He became a very highly respected Roman/Jewish historian, his works are quoted endlessly by Christians and he's a very important source for historians of the period generally. His two biggest works are The Jewish War (written in the 70s) and The Antiquities of the Jews written in the late 90s. In them, Josephus tells us about every noted person in Palestine and every event in the region in the first 70 years of the Christian era.
He is the Christian apologists dream boy....EXACTLY the kind of person who could back up some of the Christian's beliefs about Jesus.
And he appears to - very briefly (amazingly briefly when you consider how massive the works of Josephus are) in a passage known as the Testemonium Flavianum (there's another single line that's used later in the text that may be genuine, but I'll come to that). It reads:
"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. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day"
Now, this is evidence indeed. Josephus manages not only to confirm the existence of Jesus, but seems to regard him as "the Messiah", suggests he is not altogether a man (something better than just a man), that he died on a cross and was resurrected three days later, his fulfilment of divine prophecy etc. Just....wow. Right? You can see why all Christians interested in the historicity of Jesus would fight tooth and nail to keep this as "evidence". But it just does not stand up to scrutiny at all.
Most serious scholars regard it as a forgery. Some feel that it's possibly only partly a forgery. I know of none at all, even the most pious Christian historians, who believe it to be entirely genuine. Even the Catholic Encyclopaedia says it's clearly been subject to repeated interpolations. At best, I would say!
The problems with it are myriad:
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First of all, the text does not fit at all with the paragraphs both immediately before and after it. It seems to have been stuck in there right in the middle of a discourse about something else entirely. Take it out, and the text flows properly and makes sense.
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The style of the language used is very un-Josephus & not seen anywhere else in his voluminous works
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In some copies there is evidence of the text above and below having been squashed up and down to make room
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Very early copies of Antiquities includes a table of contents, put together by Christians summarising the contents. This passage is not mentioned in it! BY CHRISTIANS!
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The very briefness of the passage is extraordinary if Josephus really believed these things. He spends a lot of time talking about people far, far, far less interesting than a man "who was the Messiah"! If he believed ANY of this, we'd surely hear much more about it, wouldn't we?
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Josephus was an orthodox Jew who never converted to Christianity. No way would he ever have declared Jesus "the Messiah" or the fulfilment of divine (Jewish) prophecy!
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How could anyone dismiss something so amazing as a man rising from the grave three days after his death in a 127 word paragraph? Remember, Josephus is not merely telling us what Christians believed here - he is (apparently) attesting to the fact that it happened. This is so unlikely a thing, it's laughable
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This is ALL Josephus mentions whatsoever about Christians or Christianity in his massive works. If if was genuine, he'd have to have talked about it elsewhere, but he doesn't
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Not only did Josephus live in the right area, his parents did too. They'd have been on the scene when Jesus was up to all his amazing miracles - but Josephus appears to have heard of none of it. He talks a lot about other religions & their beliefs - but no mention of Christians or Jesus?
Christians have had to account for the lack of evidence for their beliefs from the earliest days - and apologetics began early. The earliest Christian authorities poured over all sources, most particularly Josephus (they quoted him all the time) in order to prove the historical Jesus - and this passage would have been quoted and quoted and quoted and quoted - but wasn't. Not once.
NOT ONE OF THE EARLIEST CHRISTIAN SCHOLARS MENTIONS THIS PASSAGE AT ALL
*Justin Martyr (100 - 165), who obviously pored over Josephus's works, makes no mention of the TF.
*Theophilus (d. 180), Bishop of Antioch--no mention of the TF.
*Irenaeus (120/140 - 200/203), saint and compiler of the New Testament, has not a word about the TF.
*Clement of Alexandria (150-211/215), influential Greek theologian and prolific Christian writer, head of the Alexandrian school, says nothing about the TF.
*Origen (185 - 254), no mention of the TF and specifically states that Josephus did not believe Jesus was "the Christ."
*Hippolytus (170 - 235), saint and martyr, nothing about the TF.
The author of the ancient Syriac text, "History of Armenia," refers to Josephus but not the TF.
*Minucius Felix (d. 250), lawyer and Christian convert--no mention of the TF.
*Anatolius (230 - 270/280)--no mention of TF.
*Chrysostom (347-407), saint and Syrian prelate, not a word about the TF.
........to name but a few.
There are even Christian writers of this period complaining that Josephus never mentions Christ!!!
The most important of these is Origen, the first recognised Christian apologist, who turned himself inside out quoting this, that and the other (including passages from Josephus) to try and prove Jesus. It beggars belief that he wouldn't at least mention the TF - the single most important thing that's ever been written about Jesus outside the Bible!
The simple explanation for why none of them mentioned it is - because it didn't exist yet.
The first person who mentioned it was the prime suspect himself, Eusebius, who suddenly "found" it in the 4th century. And it's interesting that even after this, some quite eminent scholars continue to quote Josephus without mentioning the TF, and when they do are quite dismissive of it, as if they already considered it fraudulent.
Eusebius freely admitted lying for Jesus - also known as "pious fraud". This is the idea that it's perfectly OK to lie to people if it's going to have the effect of bringing them to Jesus. He said: "How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived".
For this, and lots of other reasons, Eusebius is strongly suspected of having been the perpetrator of the Josephus fraud.
Mad I don't accept that there are "two sides to every story" in issues like this. This is not subjective, this is fact. The above facts are true, and it's hard to see how anyone objective could possibly conclude from knowing this that the TF is remotely genuine. It's an obvious and rather rubbish fraud.
(Hope you're feeling better, btw :))