Herculaneum mosaic buried by Vesuvius during the reign of Titus
They are both tableaus of the lost, swimming like fish in a tempestuous sea, desperately seeking salvation. Both ships carry Jews accused of being agitators disturbing the peace against Rome. In both stories, all of these lost souls miraculously survive their shipwreck on their way to Caesar. (Paul’s shipwreck story even mentions no less than four anchors being laid down.)
Regardless of whether these shipwrecks were real, metaphorical or one and the same, it is important to note that there are some unrelated historical discrepancies between Josephus and the New Testament. For example, Acts claims that a rebel named “Theudas” caused a disturbance before Judas the Galilean would emerge as the founder of the Zealots. But Josephus tells us that Theudas’s uprising occurred decades after Judas’s group came together. (38) Also, the Gospel of Mark tells us that Herod Antipas married his sister-in-law, wife of his brother Philip, something that Josephus does not say. (39) Moreover, the Gospels seem to place the death of John the Baptist in a different year than Josephus does. And there is no slaughter of innocent babies at the time of Jesus’s birth recorded by Josephus. And there are a few other interesting differences.
However, Christians have also observed that some of these are only apparent contradictions. If Josephus failed to mention one of the many marriages among the Herodian royals, this does not mean it didn’t happen. And as many have observed, ourselves included, Josephus sometimes contradicts himself.
Some of the differences are harder to explain by those who believe in the literal truth of the Gospels. And yet this problem vanishes, too, if we recognize that the New Testament authors knew their work to be allegorical in import and did not need to be strictly factual. If they were never intended to be taken literally by those few who might also read the scholarly historical tomes of Josephus, then there is no “problem” to solve. Just as Jesus taught in parables, so the Gospel narratives may have been originally intended this way. Josephus’s texts were written for the educated seeking greater education and, as such, his works needed to meet a higher standard of accuracy. The Gospels, on the other hand, were religious and liturgical texts.
What is remarkable, however, is the degree to which the historical detail in Josephus and the New Testament does correlate. The Christian imagery evoked by the strangely coincidental shipwrecks of Paul and Josephus remains remarkably similar, no matter how questionable the historical truth of these events.
There are still more parallels between the lives of Josephus and Jesus. Speaking about himself, as always in the third person, Josephus tells the following remarkable story about his escape and his switch to the Romans’ side during the Jewish War:
[Josephus] was assisted by a certain supernatural providence; for he withdrew himself from the enemy when he was in the midst of them, and leaped into a certain deep pit, whereto there adjoined a large den at one side of it, which den could not be seen by those that were above ground; and there he met with forty persons of eminency that had concealed themselves, and with provisions enough to satisfy them for not a few days. So in the day time he hid himself from the enemy, who had seized upon all places, and in the night time he got up out of the den and looked about for some way of escaping, and took exact notice of the watch; but as all places were guarded every where on his account, that there was no way of getting off unseen, he went down again into the den. Thus he concealed himself two days; but on the third day, when they had taken a woman who had been with them, he was discovered. Whereupon Vespasian sent immediately and zealously two tribunes, Paulinus and Gallicanus, and ordered them to give Josephus their right hands as a security for his life, and to exhort him to come up. (Emphasis added.) (40)
So, after spending three days in a cave while presumed dead, Josephus is revealed by a woman to be alive after all. Jesus spent three days in his tomb, as well, which was also a cave, before he was discovered by a woman, Mary Magdalene, according to all of the Gospel accounts. (41) (Curiously, Jesus’s tomb was owned by a man named “Joseph,” just as Jesus’s human father is also named “Joseph.”)
The “new life” that Josephus emerges from the cave to find is just a figurative transformation. But that new life as “Titus Flavius Josephus” would certainly be akin to a new life “in Christ,” as a devotee of the Messiah who is, paradoxically, set free from Mosaic Law, just as Paul describes this option for all Jews who converted to Christianity.
Jesus and Josephus share a royal background. Both were child prodigies who dazzled scholars at the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus associated with a wilderness holy man who was a vegetarian “bather,” as did Josephus.
Like Jesus and Paul, Josephus earned the enmity of Temple authorities, including the high priest. And, also like Paul, Josephus experienced a shipwreck on the way to Rome around the same time only to be miraculously saved on his way to Caesar.
Josephus, like Paul, describes himself as a “Pharisee.” Doctrinally, however, both are better identified with Essenes, though only with the same measure of irony. Indeed, Josephus seems to have shared profound ideological similarities with both Paul and Jesus, ranging from his objection to forced circumcision, acquiescence to Romans, permitting association with “unclean” individuals, praising Roman army officers, “loving enemies,” and believing in a paradoxically peace-loving “messiah.” The outstanding difference, of course, is that Josephus claimed Vespasian was that messiah. Paul himself probably did not live to see Vespasian’s reign.
Meanwhile, Vespasian was erecting a magnificent Temple of Peace in Rome (now destroyed) as he was calling for a new Pax Romana.
Josephus’s views are so similar to those of a Christian, in fact, that the famous 18th Century translator of Josephus’s entire corpus, William Whiston, concluded that Josephus must have been a secret Christian.
Despite his own wealth (Josephus tells us about the property he received from the Romans as a reward for his services), and thus, the hypocrisy that this opinion might imply, Josephus advocates the same position on wealth that we find in the New Testament. About the Essenes, for example, Josephus writes:
It also deserves our admiration, how much they exceed all other men that addict themselves to virtue, and this in righteousness; and indeed to such a degree, that as it hath never appeared among any other men, neither Greeks nor barbarians, no, not for a little time, so hath it endured a long while among them. This is demonstrated by that institution of theirs, which will not suffer any thing to hinder them from having all things in common; so that a rich man enjoys no more of his own wealth than he who hath nothing at all. (Emphasis added.) (42)
Josephus admires the idea of communal property as a pinnacle of virtue. This perfectly echoes the conduct of the earliest Christians that we read about in Acts:
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had… And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. (Emphasis added.) (43)
At Luke 3:11, we read that John the Baptist also advocated a similar conception of communal property: “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”