However, just as we wondered why Josephus was sympathetic to John the Baptist, we must also ask: if James was a rebel whose martyrdom (instead of Jesus’s) really did ignite the Jewish War, then why was Josephus, a Roman collaborator, so positive about him unless Josephus was attempting to express sympathy for Christianity? If the theory that we are considering is correct, of course, and Josephus was in sympathy with a form of Christianity, the question virtually answers itself. Here we see Josephus doing precisely what Paul had done earlier by engaging with James: attempting to co-opt the messianic Jewish movement for pro-Roman ends.
The matter has become especially urgent as scholars have come to realize that Josephus’s secondary mention of Christ through his “brother” may, by itself, confirm at least the partial authenticity of the deeply problematic Testimonium. The specific phrase used in Josephus’s mention of James can be translated, “the brother of Jesus, the aforementioned Christ,” and not just “Jesus, who was called Christ.”
Even if this were just formula or linguistic filler, it would be out of character for Josephus to have mentioned someone with an unusual name or title like “Christ” without giving it an explanation elsewhere. Scholars have argued that the absence of such an explanation implies that there must have already been one somewhere in his work. (17) The very formula, “X, the brother of Y” seems to imply that Y has been previously mentioned, since Y is used to identify X.
As we have observed, why would Origen criticize Josephus for failing to identify Jesus as the Christ if he had not mentioned Jesus Christ at all? If Josephus had not mentioned Jesus, that would have been Origen’s complaint instead, since Origen found Josephus so convenient to cite for many other historical purposes.
It would have been much easier to enhance an existing reference than to create an entirely new one. The interpolation itself may suggest that Josephus made at least some original mention of Jesus upon which later embellishments could be added.
Skeptics note that a Jewish historian contemporary to Josephus, Justus of Tiberias, whose work has not survived, did not mention Jesus at all even though his history covered the same period of time in which Jesus is alleged to have lived. (We know of his account only through a description of it by the Byzantine Christian, Photius, since the original work by Justus of Tiberias is lost to history.) (18)
But of course this cannot be regarded as evidence that Josephus’s mentions of Christ are forgeries because a Flavian origin of Christianity easily explains this discrepancy. Only Flavian apologists would have had any reason to assert the existence of Jesus, much less mention him in a favorable light, at this time. Indeed, we should expect only a Jewish Flavian apologist such as Josephus to assert Jesus’s existence so early if the Gospels were a creation of Flavian propaganda created to prophesy their status as Jewish messiahs.
In summary, the evidence suggests that Flavius Josephus is likely to have mentioned Jesus Christ. And his mention of him was probably just as positive as his references to John the Baptist and James the Just. The passage in which he praises Jesus and notes his death, however, was clearly tampered with by Christians around the time of Eusebius, dramatically augmenting his claims about Jesus while removing references to the murder of James as the incitement to the war.
As an historian, Josephus had to model himself after the great historians to whom a Roman or Hellenized audience was accustomed, such as Thucydides or Polybius. This required a nonsectarian detachment and objectivity. This kind of neutrality is exactly what is absent from Josephus’s Testimonium of Jesus Christ as we have received it down through the centuries. For this reason alone, Josephus, whether or not he was Christian, would probably not have called Jesus “the Christ” even if he had been a sincere and devout Christian.
However, why should Josephus record Jesus at all, a person who supposedly died 60 years prior to his pen touching the page, an obscure founder of a minor sectarian offshoot of Judaism? And how could Josephus have ever referred to Jesus in any positive way while subject to his imperial masters’ tacit approval unless Christianity enjoyed some form of imperial Flavian sanction, especially considering the war against messianic Judaism that had just been concluded? Only later Christians could view Josephus’s history as inadequate for not openly declaring Jesus to be “the Christ.”
Taken together, Josephus’s positive mentions of any Christian protagonists is remarkable enough. Such references constitute an official sanctioning by Josephus, and at least implicitly by the Flavian dynasty itself, of the prominent Christian figures Jesus, James and John the Baptist. The only resistance to believing that the Flavians’ historian could have mentioned Christ comes down to an instinctive aversion to its problematic imperial provenance at so early a date.
If our theory is correct, then who could have written the Gospels?
For the answer to that, let us explore yet another remarkable set of literary connections between the life and works of Josephus and the New Testament.
We have already seen that stories and language from sacred Hebrew scriptures were liberally used by the authors of the Gospels to create accounts of Jesus’s life, an aspect of the Gospels that has long been acknowledged and studied by New Testament scholars. The examples are numerous. Moses, in particular, seems to have served as an inspiration for the story of the “lawgiver” Jesus. The most obvious parallel to Moses is the slaughter of infant sons by a wicked king at the birth of both of these “deliverers.” Also, both prophets deliver God’s law from a “mount.” We have also seen how the Old Testament Joseph parallels “Joseph” in the Gospel of Matthew. The former interpreted prophetic dreams in Egypt while the latter “father” of Jesus, named Joseph, had a prophetic dream that led him to Egypt.
We have also seen how Josephus’s own life is reflected in the lives of both Jesus and Paul in the New Testament.
But there is another group of strikingly similar parallels in the New Testament between Josephus’s life and the Old Testament that we should also consider.
Both Josephus and the New Testament usually rely on the Septuagint, which is the most famous Greek translation of Hebrew scripture, when referencing the Old Testament. However, both also sometimes cite material that is apparently from Hebrew or Aramaic editions. That mixture can be analyzed in both and compared.
In writing the Antiquities, Josephus mined the precious documents that the Romans had plundered from the Jerusalem Temple, given to him by Titus, as sources for his comprehensive recapitulation of Hebrew literature. Therefore, Josephus used precisely the same mixture of sources, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, that we know to have been incorporated into the life of Jesus in the Gospels.
Josephus and the New Testament not only use the same sources but employ the same methodology in using that mix of sources.
For example, according to the Book of Genesis, the Hebrew Joseph was sold as a slave by his envious brothers after he told them about his prophetic dreams. His dreams suggested that his brothers would one day “bow down” to him. (19) Resold in Egypt as a slave, according to Genesis, Joseph would become famous for interpreting other people’s dreams. After interpreting Pharaoh’s disturbing dreams with spectacular accuracy, Joseph was named governor of the land. This, in turn, helped Joseph save the lives of his family, the House of Israel. (20)