Could a pious Christian have ever served a Roman emperor? What if the Roman emperor was the second coming of Jesus Christ?
Roman emperors themselves would become pious Christians in time, of course, and pious Christians would become Roman emperors.
Another argument against the passage’s authenticity: If Josephus actually was Christian, how could he advertise it like this without fear of prosecution by his Roman patrons? How could he write anything like the Testimonium Flavianum under the watchful eye of the emperor while on his payroll? Again, we can readily see the answer to this objection, too.
Perhaps the most common objection of all to the authenticity of the Testimonium, however, insists that Josephus is simply too highly connected with Roman authorities to credibly have any sort of sympathy with Christianity during this nascent stage in Church history. And again, a Flavian provenance for the Gospels and a Roman hand behind most of the rest of the New Testament answers this objection, easily and with no conflict or contradiction.
If the Gospels were part of the Flavian imperial cult’s propaganda effort to establish their claims as authentic Jewish messiahs after the conquest of Judea, and their mission was to reform Judaism into something manageable by the Roman state, then of course this controversial passage would have enjoyed official sanction. It would follow that Josephus’s attributed works were themselves important and foundational elements of this imperial project.
According to the theory of Christian origins now emerging from all of the facts, we should actually expect only a Flavian apologist to make any reference to Jesus Christ at so early a date—especially any positive one. So the fact that no other contemporary historians mention Jesus at all is quite predictable and perfectly explained.
However, we must still wonder: even if we are right and Josephus had no fear of prosecution himself for praising Christ, could he risk alienating his wider pagan and Hellenized Jewish audience by expressing partisan sympathy for Jesus Christ in a work of history?
If Christianity is conventionally seen as a splinter group of messianic Jews spreading their gospel in the face of Roman opposition, then any positive mention of Jesus or those associated with him by a highly placed Roman operative like Josephus in the 1st Century must be absurd on its face. Even if the original Josephus passage was more tepid in its assertions, that such an uncritical reference to Jesus Christ could exist at all in Josephus’s work, without any other supporting evidence or political qualifications, implies at least a Flavian sanction of Christianity.
Therefore, we must be extremely careful as we consider what, if anything, might have been added to the Testimonium Flavianum and what, if anything, was original to Flavius Josephus’s text.
First, we must recognize that there is very good reason to believe that this crucial passage was originally far less grand in its claims about Jesus Christ.
We know this because the early 4th Century Christian historian Eusebius quotes the Testimonium just as we have it in our texts today, but his 3rd Century predecessor, Origen, the first Christian writer to make substantial use of Josephus, repeatedly states in his work that Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Christ.
So something must have happened in between these two sources.
Despite the historian Josephus’s heavy influence on theologians, no Church Father cited the famous Testimonium prior to Eusebius, author of the earliest history of the Christian Church, in the 4th Century. Josephus’s influence on Christian writers down through the centuries is profound. While his influence grew over time, his impact came relatively early and was widespread. According to scholar Louis Feldman, at least eleven Church Fathers prior to or contemporary with the early Christian historian Eusebius cited Josephus. (6) As Feldman also observes, the widely respected translator, St. Jerome, cited Josephus no less than 90 times, calling him a second Livy. (7) Yet, before Eusebius, all of them failed to mention the Testimonium.
And it is interesting that even Josephus does not mention Jesus in Wars of the Jews, his earlier work. However, in the part of his later work, Antiquities of the Jews, that overlaps his earlier work, he does. Why?
Most Christian writers in Eusebius’s own time do not mention this passage, either, and Jerome, who does, modifies it to read only: Jesus “was believed” to be the Messiah.
So, it is easy to see how all of this scholarly controversy might weigh heavily in favor of dismissing the Testimonium as an outright forgery.
Yet, the reluctance of Church Fathers to mention this passage may reflect Jerome’s motive for modifying it: they might have shared the same doubt that has lead so many recent scholars to disbelieve that Josephus, whether as Jew or Roman, could mention Jesus at all, let alone so positively, given his proximity to Roman emperors. Their reluctance to cite Josephus’s passage may simply be another example of the same baseless incredulity that has deflected so much evidence of Christianity’s Roman provenance.
When the Gospels are considered as Flavian propaganda, it becomes easy to see why other historians contemporary to Josephus never mentioned Jesus Christ. Indeed, that would explain why none of them did. And the absence of a similar reference in Josephus’s earlier work also becomes explainable, as this aspect of Flavian propaganda had probably not yet been fleshed out when Josephus had written his earlier chronicle of the war.
Most importantly, it is also highly probable that if the original passage had been a more neutral mention of Jesus, as we shall see was probably the case, Christians would have overlooked what they disdained as a “Jewish source” for being insufficiently enthusiastic about Christ. The Church father Origen leveled that very criticism at Josephus, as we shall see. However desperate contemporary scholars are to find corroboration for the historically dubious Gospels, early Christians did not share such concerns. They had the Gospels, which they believed were all the textual “evidence” they needed.
And yet, over time, this confidence would have yielded to an increasing need for the historical attestation of Jesus that Josephus uniquely provides for the Church. After all, no one else substantiates the existence of Christ so early outside the New Testament itself.
The deep impact of Flavius Josephus’s work on Christians, whether they made use of his Testimonium or not, demonstrates how fundamentally sympathetic his work is to Christianity in general. Many less sympathetic texts from other authors of this period, such as Justus of Tiberius, did not survive in Christian libraries at all and are lost to history.
Why would Origen in the 3rd Century be the very first Christian writer to make substantial use of Josephus? He may simply have studied Josephus because of his field of interest, which seemed to encompass themes “closely related with the Bible [Old Testament] and the Jews,” and possibly also because of Origen’s own “background and interests” in history, as one scholar suggests. (8) So why does Origen’s work present a serious problem for the authenticity of Josephus’s testimonial to Christ?
Origen
The most important Christian philosopher before St. Augustine, Origen was a prolific writer and a well-read scholar in the 3rd Century who appreciated the work of Hellenized Jews like Philo and Josephus. He also appreciated how much the work of Josephus could contribute to a deeper understanding of Christianity.