Flavius Josephus

Background

Flavius Josephus (37–c.100 CE) was a Jerusalem priest and historian. A commander in Galilee during the Jewish revolt against Rome (66–70), he surrendered to the Romans and spent the rest of his life in Rome under Flavian patronage, where he wrote the Jewish War and the twenty-book Antiquities of the Jews (c. 93 CE) — the fullest surviving account of Second-Temple Judaism by an insider, composed in Greek for a Roman audience.

Josephus is not a "proponent" of any apologetic position; he is the indispensable non-Christian witness. Two passages of the Antiquities anchor the entire historicity debate in this wiki. The Testimonium Flavianum reports that "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" (Josephus, Ant. XVIII.3.3) — a text whose confessional sentences ("He was [the] Christ") are widely judged Christian interpolations, and which this wiki therefore uses only in its contested naked core. The James passage reports the stoning of "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" (Josephus, Ant. XX.9.1) — embedded in a mundane account of a high priest's deposition, with no confessional content, and therefore the cleaner of the two references.

Positions held in this wiki

• Jesus Mythicism Assessed — listed among the view's proponents as its evidentiary foundation: the convergence of Ant. XX.9.1 with Gal 1:19 (bib) — two independent sources attesting the same brother of the same Jesus — is the article's central rebuttal of mythicism.
• Primary source in The Resurrection of Jesus — Historicity — the Testimonium's core supplies the non-Christian attestation of crucifixion under Pilate and of the disciples' appearance-claims.

Key works in our corpus

• Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation) — in corpus, complete. Load-bearing passages: XVIII.3.3 (Testimonium Flavianum), XX.9.1 (James).
• The Wars of the Jews (Whiston translation) — in corpus, complete; background on the war, Pilate's administration, and first-century Judea.

Principal critics

Criticism here concerns the texts, not the man: - Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews — the classical mythicists held the Jesus references compromised: the Testimonium's corruption is real, and the mythicist urges that the whole passage falls with its interpolations (Schweitzer 1906 surveys the school; Drews 1910 states the case directly). - Richard Carrier — contemporary mythicist challenge to both passages; not in corpus. - The majority critical reply — partial-interpolation for XVIII.3.3, authenticity for XX.9.1 — is set out in Jesus Mythicism Assessed, with the remaining documentation gap flagged there.

See also

• Bart D. Ehrman — the contemporary scholar whose anti-mythicist case leans hardest on Josephus.
• J. Gresham Machen — uses the Pauline evidence that corroborates the James passage.
• Albert Schweitzer — historian of the debate over these texts.