T. C. Schmidt has bravely added to the bibliography on the so-called Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus, with a new book through Oxford University Press, titled: “Josephus & Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ.” The author makes the case that this much-discussed passage is “substantially authentic.” In doing so he responds to recent scholarship on the subject, some of which has been unduly sceptical.
But thankfully the PDF is open-access! It can be downloaded from OUP here, or at the promotional website at https://josephusandjesus.com/. The printed book can be found on Amazon.com here, and Amazon.co.uk here, in a few days.
Here’s the abstract:
This book brings to light an extraordinary connection between Jesus of Nazareth and the Jewish historian Josephus. Writing in 93/4 CE, Josephus composed an account of Jesus known as the Testimonium Flavianum. Despite this being the oldest description of Jesus written by a non-Christian, scholars have long doubted its authenticity due to the alleged pro-Christian claims it contains. The present book, however, authenticates Josephus’ authorship and then reveals a startling discovery. First, the opening chapters demonstrate that ancient Christians read the Testimonium Flavianum quite differently from modern scholars, considering it to be basically mundane or even vaguely negative, and hence far from the pro-Christian rendering that most scholars have interpreted it to be. This suggests that the Testimonium Flavianum was indeed written by a non-Christian. The book then employs stylometric analysis to demonstrate that the Testimonium Flavianum closely matches Josephus’ style. The Testimonium Flavianum appears, therefore, to be genuinely authored by Josephus. The final chapters explore Josephus’ sources of information about Jesus, revealing a remarkable discovery: Josephus was directly familiar with those who attended the trials of Jesus’ apostles and even those who attended the trial of Jesus himself. The book concludes by describing what Josephus tells us about the Jesus of history, particularly regarding how the stories of Jesus’ miracles and his resurrection developed.
Dr S. has also published a series of tweets with excerpts on his Twitter account, starting here. Unfortunately I lack the time to review the book properly at the moment.
For some time now, the consensus of scholarship has been that the passage is authentic but corrupt. A few scholars have seen the passage as entirely corrupt, and a few as entirely authentic. Every word, almost every word-division, has been examined and thrashed over at incredible length for centuries now.
If I might venture a little bit of speculation, the real reason why there has been no lasting consensus is that the text “feels wrong” to everyone, but that nobody can agree on just why it is wrong, or which pieces of it are wrong. This has led to three different positions, held with varying degrees of certainty.
Some unable to find any solid ground upon which to stand, in desperation dismiss the whole passage as an interpolation. Unfortunately this conclusion raises as many questions as it solves. Others, unable to find any solid ground on which to object to any particular passage, have accepted the whole passage as genuine. This seems to be a mirror image of the rejectionist position. Most writers have hedged their bets!
Versions of the text appear in several languages. One area which is extremely welcome is that Dr. S. has published photographs of the manuscripts, and shown that the text varies more than we tend to think. We all know that Jerome wrote “credebatur esse Christum,” “he was believed to be the Christ,” in his own book. But it is fascinating to find that “he was the Christ” appears in the second oldest Latin manuscript.
Much of the writing on the passage tends to rely on the “Fernseed and Elephants” type of criticism, in which monsters start to appear in the vision of any critic if he stares through the magnifying glass, straining, at one piece of text long enough.
One particularly extreme version of the rejectionist position is the claim that, not only is the TF an interpolation, but it is a forgery, and a forgery by poor old Eusebius of Caesarea, who quotes it three times in different works. This claim first appeared decades ago in an article by Solomon Zeitlin, and there have been a couple of attempts to revive it. The efforts made to justify this allegation have led to some very strained claims. Kindly Dr S. has referenced a couple of articles of my own on some of this stuff. Rightly Dr Schmidt has felt it necessary to review the claim in an appendix, and to look at the citation practices of Eusebius. The latter would be a useful book all on its own, and it would be no small undertaking either.
In summary, Dr S. has done us all a service by placing the whole debate in a single volume, and pointing out the weaknesses in arguments that we have all
Thanks for drawing this to my attention, Roger. I am on the verge of submitting an article to a journal, also arguing that the testimonium flavianum is (or could be) genuine. By the sound of it, this book reaches the same conclusion from a different angle!
How serendipitous! Certainly worth checking!
Two new books address this question, whether Flavius Josephus, who wrote Antiquities of the Jews, or Judean Antiquities, in about the year 94 of the first century CE, mentioned Jesus of Nazareth. This most famous portion of his book eventually came to be called the Testimonium Flavianum, often abbreviated as the TF. Both books conclude that Josephus did indeed mention this Jesus, though they arrive at that conclusion via somewhat different paths. They significantly differ as to exactly what Josephus wrote about Jesus, as far as we can tell, which may have been partially altered in later manuscripts. Though all available manuscripts of Josephus’ book include the passage about Jesus, there are at least three different camps of thought that interpret this fact: either Josephus wrote it all, or nearly all of it; or Josephus wrote something, but the Jesus section was considerably rewritten and expanded; or Josephus wrote none of it, because it was all added, fully interpolated, later.
The new books are:
Daniel R. Schwartz. Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, Judean Antiquities, Books 18-20, edited by Steve Mason. (Brill, 2025).
Followed soon after by
T. C. Schmidt. Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ. (Oxford University Press, 2025). An open access download is freely available here:
https://josephusandjesus.com/
Schwartz updates and elaborates on what is the current mainstream view, that Christians added text to the original description, to make it more complimentary.
Schmidt argues that the extant text is practically all by Josephus. But Schmidt includes two restored brief omissions–later subtractions, not additions—that he now retrojects here from later translations from the Greek. Put together, in context, the Schmidt-proposed text originally was not complimentary. It was just a report, not a commendation. As such, it would not have been especially useful to early Christian writers, so arguments from silence before Eusebius may mislead. Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea, though, may well have learned from the Antiquities 18 section, in the manuscript version available to him, circa 245-249 CE, that Josephus was not a Christian (see his Commentary on Matthew 10.17 and compare Against Celsus 1.47).
Both Schwartz and Schmidt argue against the view, held by Ken Olson and others, that Josephus did not include Jesus at all, and that such was totally a later Christian addition, maybe by Eusebius. What would Josephus do? Analyzing this question involves checking what else Josephus wrote, to see if the TF suits his work or stands out as foreign to him. See, e.g., K. A. Olson, “A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum,” pages 97-114 in Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations (Cambridge: Harvard UP for the Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013).
Schwartz’s mandate, as part of a Josephus series edited by Steve Mason, was to translate and comment on Antiquities books 18 through 20. Antiquities 18.63-64 [3.3], in surviving manuscripts, mentions Jesus and then–note this–later, 18.116-119 [5.1], John the Baptist; Antiquities 20.197-203 [9.1] mentions James, the brother of Jesus.
Schmidt’s mandate was to focus on evaluating the history of scholarship on the question whether and how Josephus mentioned Jesus. And to make new contributions. Schmidt surely provides the most thorough account ever of the reception history of the Josephus TF text and its setting.
Schwartz’s volume, then, offers more on the general context of who Josephus was, and what were his methods and his intended, largely Roman, audience in writing Antiquities, especially in book 18, which was not the best-organized portion of the work. The series editor, Steve Mason, has often written about the audience Josephus wished to persuade in his apologetic presentation concerning the history of his Judean people. Given that Josephus was familiar with Jerusalem and Galilee and Rome, he would have known that some of his readers had heard about Jesus and were curious about his place in history. If the population estimates by Rodney Stark, in his 1996 book, The Rise of Christianity, are even ballpark accurate, then by 94 CE, there may have been over 50,000 current Christians. (Neither book cites Stark.) Because the Schwartz volume conveniently includes book 20, it also addresses the account of James, brother of Jesus and whether it, too, mentions Christ. More could be said, in both books, about the spelling, Chrestus, good, in some accounts, such as Tacitus or Suetonius.
Both books are well produced results of excellent scholarship. A major difference is in the means of access. The Schwartz volume, available only in paper, is expensive. The Schmidt volume is available in paper and also digitally, so it is easier to browse before deciding whether to fully read. If a visit to a library or an interlibrary loan scan is required to consult Schwartz, be sure to include, at a bare minimum, pages xvii, 9, 75-77, 91-94, and 305-306, though, of course, preferably all of it, including Bibliography and Indexes.
The Schmidt book, given its focus, is the more important one for this question, even though, unfortunately, given the dates of publication, it makes only slight use of the Schwartz volume.
Schwartz, understandably, dedicated his volume to the late, great scholar and gentleman Louis H. Feldman, who was so generous with his learning (including to me, in correspondence), but, for example, Schwartz’s bibliography, though it is fully 32 pages long (!), has nine by Feldman, but missed one important publication, Feldman, Louis H. “On the Authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum Attributed to Josephus.” In New Perspectives on Jewish- Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger, edited by Jacob Schacter and Elisheva Carlebach, 13– 30. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism 33. (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
The Schmidt volume may occasionally tilt towards excessive respect of Josephus. For example, we read that Josephus had, from his youth, an excellent memory; at least, he says so in his Life! Schmidt (143) duly recognized that as “likely self-aggrandizement,” but somewhat undercuts that by adding what a productive author he was. More skepticism might be called for when Josephus claimed to know all about the Essenes. His timeline just does not add up; he was not a full Essene initiate, not a reader of the pesharim. It is interesting that Josephus mentions John the Baptist after Jesus–a mistake—but with no connection to Jesus, so having in this case a non-Christian source? (Compare Mandaeans.)
Schmidt shows convincingly that Josephus knew specific people who either knew Jesus or at least knew of him. On the other hand, wondering whether Josephus had access to written official records of the trial of Jesus seems a vanishingly-small possibility.
Any new scholarly treatment of Josephus on Jesus must properly address both books’ insights as well as their debatable assertions.
This is merely a preliminary note and a recommendation of two books. Congratulations to both authors. Learned reviews will follow in due course, as well as a dedicated session in an SBL meeting in November in Boston.”
Thank you very much for this additional information! Annoying about the inaccessibility of the Schwartz volume, isn’t it!
It has long appeared to me that Josephus had heard and seen plenty and that he knew what he was talking about, but that he had an ambivalent- perhaps fearful – attitude towards Christ/ians. Over the years, I read a few scholars who argued plausibly that the Testimonium was, more or less, authenticated by various ancient translations of his work. But, it was clear that, in general, the academic world was having little or none of that view. Gradually, however, one seems to have seen the beginnings of a thaw in that frozen mindset; and I look forward to reading the new book(s). Thank you for airing the subject!
I have to go out to a series of boring meetings interspersed with hanging around. So, I’ve downloaded Whiston’s little dissertation on the Testimony, to get me back into the swing of things! ………. Speaking of Whiston, can anybody recall where he talks about the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, of Titus giving Josephus his choice of scroll(s) from the Temple? And anyone remember where the Talmud [I think it was the Talmud] mentioned that three complete Torah scrolls were kept in the Temple, as master copies, from which one might correct a copy or make a new copy?
Alexander Thomson, see Appendix 5 of Schmidt’s book, which cites Life 418 and War 7.150, concerning a scroll from Jerusalem.
Josephus is full of good things that are useful corroborations. Heck, the whole of Antiquities is great for arguing with people who say the OT was corrupted and changed in late Roman or early medieval times.
I also really like Josephus explaining how, as a smart young Jewish kid, he was not only questioned by the rabbis in a flatteringly serious way, but invited to dinner parties along with his dad! His autobiographical explanations also explain a lot of the world of Jesus’ time.
Good points. I must read Antiquities again.