Our Earliest Description of Jesus

A New Case for Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum

What is our earliest non-Christian source for Jesus?

Most introductory textbooks will point you to Antiquities of the Jews, Flavius Josephus’ twenty-book history of Judaism from the creation of the world to the present.

Completed in 93 CE, there are two places in this work that refer to Jesus. In his final book, Josephus brings up a certain James, whom he identifies as ‘the brother of Jesus who is called Christ’ (Ἰάκωβος ὁ ἀδελφὸς Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ; 20.9.1).

This passing reference corroborates a detail found in the gospels and Paul: that Jesus had an earthly brother called James. Yet here, Josephus’ focus is not on Jesus himself. It is on the sentencing to death of James and others by the Sanhedrin.

In an earlier passage, however, we are treated to an extended description of Jesus himself. It is this passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum (TF), which has attracted a greater deal of scholarly controversy. A common translation is this:

‘Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.’

When I have shown this passage to my students, I like asking them if there is anything odd about this description in the work of a Jewish historian.

Invariably, they highlight a number of expressions which they find curious:

• if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works

• a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure

• and he brought over many of the Jews and many also of the Greeks

• He was the Christ

• he appeared to them alive again on the third day.

• as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him

As my students tell me, if Josephus had truly written these words, he would be a Christian! But he wasn’t. It then follows that this passage is an interpolation. Either the entire thing is a forgery, or it has undergone tampering by a Christian scribe.

For many years, scholars have found the idea of forgery appealing for two key reasons. First, Origen explicitly attests that Josephus ‘did not believe in Jesus as the Christ’ in two of his works (Origen, Cels. 1.47; Comm. Matt. 10.17). Second, the earliest manuscripts of Antiquities are from the medieval period, providing plenty of time for a Christian to spruce up the text.

Yet recently, historian T.C. Schmidt has set out an alternative. In his OUP book (which is available to download for free on his website) Schmidt argues that the testimony might be authentic after all. In what follows, I unpack his argument.

The Testimonium does not have to be read positively

The greatest problem for the Testimonium’s authenticity is that it reads as a glowing description of Jesus – exactly the sort of description a Christian scribe would pen. Yet according to Schmidt, the TF can be read in a neutral tone. Here is how: