Bust of Titus, Herculaneum
Christian tradition holds that Jesus was 33 years old when he made his “triumphant” entry into Jerusalem and predicted the destruction of the Temple before he was crucified.
Born just a few years after the Crucifixion, Titus was 33 years old when he made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem and destroyed the Jewish Temple, 40 years later.
Their humble origins, their claims to being the Jewish messiah (but with pagan elements added), their anti-Jewish status as man-gods, their advocacy of peace, Titus’s fame as a healer of sickness, Vespasian’s identical healing miracles, Titus’s loving compassion, his fulfillment of Jesus’s prophesied return within a generation coinciding with the Temple’s destruction, and so much more, all reflect Jesus Christ as clearly as the symbol on Titus’s coins.
The Gospels’ story of Jesus unmistakably blames his death on the Jews and exonerates the Romans—to such an extent that Christians concluded the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem must have been God’s punishment for their treatment of Jesus. Both early Church writers Origen and Eusebius quite explicitly argued this, centuries later. The Gospel of Mark (thought to be composed around 71 CE by many scholars) could already reflect this causal relationship since in it Jesus warns Jerusalem of the destruction to come only days before his crucifixion. Jesus predicts false messiahs, war, and a catastrophic end to the rebellion against Roman rule.
Jesus even asks God to forgive the very Roman soldiers nailing him to the Cross, excusing them because they “know not what they do.” (52) The Romans don’t know any better, since they think they are executing a rebel who claimed to be “King of the Jews.” It is only on these mistaken grounds that they proceed to “mock” and “kill him,” and they are therefore forgiven by Christ himself.
Even the scene in the Gospels depicting Roman soldiers casting lots for Jesus’s robe during the Crucifixion is, in fact, a veiled attack on the Jewish rebels, who, according to Josephus’s own contemptuous account, at one time awarded high priesthoods by what Josephus views as a corrupt process of casting lots. Jesus’s robe is a clear allusion to priestly vestments. (53) According to the Gospel of John, the garment was of one single piece—just as Josephus describes the garments of the high priests. (54) This famous scene is therefore a criticism not of Romans but of the corruption of the Jewish rebels’ own process of selecting their religious leaders.
Jesus’s forgiveness of his Roman executioners does not extend to his Jewish accusers in the Sanhedrin, however. Nor does he ask forgiveness for Judas, the disciple who had betrayed him. Nor does he ask it for the Jewish crowd that three times demanded his execution. In these cases, the excuse Jesus gives for the Roman soldiers driving nails into his flesh is denied the Jews—for they do know better.
Jesus had already condemned the Temple establishment for converting God’s house into “a den of thieves.” (55) In doing so he had provided justification for Titus’s destruction of the Temple 40 years later, which Josephus, who was there, would describe in such strikingly similar visual details, including the ominous specter of armies in the clouds.
General Titus tears the curtain of the Temple and enters the Holy of Holies
Upon witnessing the Crucifixion, we are told that it is a Roman “centurion” who “praised God” and said, “Surely this was a righteous man,” according to Luke’s Gospel. (56)
The Gospels are unfailingly consistent with a pro-Roman/anti-Jewish agenda, with the political and religious views of Josephus—and with the theory of their Roman provenance we have been presenting.
A Roman and, indeed, an imperial origin for the New Testament integrates and harmonizes all of the earliest evidence we have inherited about Christianity, including the pagan sources Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger, the archeological evidence, the historical evidence, the contemporary iconography, the works of Josephus, the New Testament, and even the Talmud. Such an interpretation stands independently simply on the agreement of all of these sources without any direct evidence that Titus Flavius Josephus, an employee of the Flavian emperors, personally endorsed Christianity or actually referred to Jesus Christ by name.
But there is evidence that he did. And it is time that we take a look at that evidence.
III.
The Flavian Testimony for Christ
If the Gospels sprang from 1st Century Flavian propaganda, then we should, some might argue, expect to find actual textual evidence of a Flavian Christianity, in addition to the coins, iconography, art, architecture, history, politics, and the historical and personal relationships of the Flavians that we have already presented.
If the Flavians were bolstering their titles as Jewish messiahs by way of the Gospels, why shouldn’t we expect Flavius Josephus, their own “Jewish” historian, to have directly participated in such an important effort?
Titus Flavius Josephus
On the other hand, could a man in Josephus’s profession risk alienating his wider audience by admitting to such a belief or make any positive mention of Christianity to a 1st Century audience without compromising his credibility as an historian? The absence of such evidence might not be conclusive, therefore, one way or the other.
And yet, as remarkable as it may sound, Flavius Josephus may have done precisely what our theory predicts. And what he said about Jesus Christ has been a textual battlefield for theologians and scholars for centuries.
Flavius Josephus, the Flavians’ own court historian, not only mentions Jesus Christ, but he does it before anyone else outside of Christian literature by decades. His description of Jesus Christ is, on its face, so extraordinary that it has usually been dismissed outright.
We have seen the same incredulity before: how could anyone so highly placed in Roman government, especially so early, have expressed such open sympathy for Christianity? And, once again, this is the same foundation for much of the doubt concerning the passage we are about to examine.
We must set aside mere incredulity now and try to see Josephus’s reference to Jesus for what it means—as well as what it does not. As it has been passed down to us, Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus’s exhaustive account of Jewish history, contains this amazing passage:
At this time there was Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed wonderful works, and a teacher of people who received the truth with pleasure. He stirred up both many Jews and many Greeks. He was the Christ. And when Pilate condemned him to the cross, since he was accused by the leading men among us, those who had loved him from the first did not desist, for he appeared to them on the third day, having life again, as the prophets of God had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him. And until now the tribe of Christians, so named from him, is not extinct. (Emphasis added.) (1)
This passage is known as the Testimonium Flavianum, that is, the “Flavian Testimony for Christ.”
If verified, this passage would be the very first mention of Jesus Christ by any historian or any other Roman source, predating even Pliny the Younger by two decades. In fact, if it was truly written by Josephus, it would predate all archeological evidence of Christianity currently accepted by historians (which does not include the new evidence we have presented in this book).