Dr. Tom C. Schmidt received his PhD in Ancient Christianity from Yale University and, in Fall 2025, will be Associate Professor at Fairfield University and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University. He has published books with Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. Recently, Dr. Schmidt has written a groundbreaking book titled, Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ, available for free online, in which he argues convincingly that the Testimonium Flavianum in Book 18, chapter 3 of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews is, in fact, authentic, and that the language used in the passage is indeed that of Josephus. (The book’s Website can be found here.) However, he also contends that the passage about Jesus is mistranslated in its English version, that it is not as flattering as it seems, and that the original reflects his ambiguity about who Jesus really was. Dr. Schmidt argues that in the original version, Josephus does not say Jesus was the Christ, but that he was thought to be the Christ.
I need hardly point out that if the Testimonium Flavianum is authentic, it adds to the case for the historicity of Jesus.
Skeptical? I was, too, until I watched the video of Schmidt being interviewed by Christian pastor and apologist Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary), who is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. Let me know what you think.
The popular English translation of the Testimonium Flavianum (henceforth TF) reads as follows:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.
The translation proposed by Schmidt is as follows. I’ve added most of the square brackets, to highlight the ambiguities of the text, which are discussed by Schmidt in Chapter 3 of his book. However, the phrase “[thought to be]” is original to Schmidt, as it reflects an uncertainty regarding which of the textual variants is the original reading:
And in this time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man [was he superhuman, or even demonic?], for he was a doer of incredible [miraculous or magical?] deeds, a teacher of men who receive truisms with pleasure. And he brought over many from among the Jews and many from among the Greeks. He was [thought to be] the Christ. And, when Pilate had condemned him to the cross at the accusation of the first men among us, those who at first were devoted to him did not cease to be so, for on the third day it seemed to them that he was alive again given that [they believed] the divine prophets had spoken such things and thousands of other wonderful things about him. And up till now the tribe of the Christians, who were named from him, has not disappeared.
Below are Schmidt’s comments about select phrases in the TF.
‘a wise man’
The next phrase in the TF appears to praise Jesus as a wise man by calling him a σοϕὸς ἀνήρ. This accords with the style of Josephus, who uses, in the Antiquities no less, the same locution for Solomon (ἀνδρὶ σοϕῷ)42 and Daniel (σοϕὸς ἀνήρ).43
…[T]he TF’s apparent praise for Jesus’ wisdom is not out of order when compared with other non-Christian sources and hence may well have been unremarkable for a first-century Jew, like Josephus, to have said.
Adding to this point is the fact that the New Testament authors never call Jesus a ‘wise man’ (σοϕός) and Luke alone directly states that Jesus had ‘wisdom’, but he only applies this to the boy Jesus.49 A crowd once or twice declares that Jesus possessed great ‘wisdom’,50 but again this does not seem to be a typical way early Christians spoke about Jesus. The apostle Paul even condemns ‘wise men’ (σοϕοί),51 and Jesus too critiqued them.52 This tendency continued in other early Christian writings with Ignatius of Antioch, Justin the Martyr, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria all doing the same,53 likely because the term ‘wise man’ was so often associated with pagan philosophy.
‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’
It is often claimed, however, that the phrase at hand is suspicious because it goes beyond simply complementing the wisdom of Jesus and seems instead to be denying his humanity in order to promote his divinity.61 In this one must remember that Christian authors like Origen, Eusebius, and practically all others ardently felt that Jesus was in fact human.62 They consequently would have viewed any denials of his humanity as heretical. Therefore, most Christians—authors and scribes—would likely not have interpolated such a statement into the TF. And, more pointedly, one could always interpret the above statement as sarcastically implying that Jesus was less than human.63
…If one interprets the TF’s statement about Jesus’ humanity as sarcasm, such would then cast negative light on the previous statement that Jesus was ‘wise’ in as much as it too would become sarcastic. The statement may thus hearken back to how in the Gospels Jesus was accused of not only being in league with demons, but also of being a demon himself.66
Either way though, it was not out of line for an ancient non-Christian to suggest that Jesus was something more than human. For instance, as great a critic of Christianity as Porphyry was willing to admit that certain gods declared that ‘Christ was most faithful and has been made immortal’. He then goes on to cite an oracle in support of this.67 Porphyry himself seems to have classified Jesus as an ‘undefiled soul’ and hence one of the three kinds of ‘superior beings’ that accompany the gods.68
Such sentiments would also not have appeared to be atypical of Josephus since he employs the epithet ‘divine’ (θεῖος) to describe Jewish figures like Moses, Solomon, and Isaiah.69
…the TF does not present Josephus as actually calling Jesus divine anyway, but only presents this as a potential possibility—as long as one does not interpret the statement more negatively.
‘for he was a doer of miraculous deeds’
In fact, Jewish sources otherwise critical of Jesus repeatedly admit that he did work what we would call ‘miracles’. We see this most strikingly in the ‘Jew of Celsus’ (c.150 ce) who says that Jesus did perform παράδοξα, using the precise word deployed by the TF.76 Justin the Martyr further says that Jews believed Jesus worked miracles by magic,77 and a similar claim is time and again lodged against Jesus by Jewish authorities in the Gospels themselves.78 The Babylonian Talmud also criticizes Jesus ‘because he practiced sorcery’ (שכישף).79
More than this, the connotations of the word παράδοξος, though supernatural, were morally questionable and open to negative interpretation. LSJ defines the term as something ‘incredible’, ‘contrary to expectation’, or even ‘a paradox’.86 The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek further specifies other definitions like ‘surprising’ and ‘strange’.87
Possible ways of translating παράδοξα therefore range from anything between the positive ‘miraculous deeds’, to the ambiguous ‘incredible deeds’ or ‘crazy deeds’,94 to the more negative ‘magical deeds’.
‘a teacher of men who receive truisms with pleasure’
In summary, this section of the TF contains remarkably Josephan vocabulary with its usage of ‘teacher’ (διδάσκαλος), ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων), and ‘truisms’ (τἀληθῆ), all of which are strongly or at least plausibly Josephan. Most importantly though is that these terms do not indicate a positive estimation of Jesus, for ‘teacher’ (διδάσκαλος) is often used by Josephus negatively, ‘receive with pleasure’ (τῶν ἡδονῇ . . . δεχομένων) is often negative, and ‘truisms’ (τἀληθῆ) is again fairly mundane in Josephus’ writings.
‘and he brought over many of the Jews and many also of the Greeks’
…the TF’s phrase about Jesus having many Greek and Jewish disciples may also carry a far more ambiguous or possibly negative valence than the one implied by how scholars have traditionally translated it. This revolves around the meaning of the Greek word ἐπάγομαι, which can mean ‘to lead’ someone in a neutral sense,146 or, according to LSJ and the Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, it may have the negative connotations of ‘induce’ or otherwise mislead.147…
However one chooses to take it though, the evidence demonstrates that such phrasing could well have been interpreted neutrally, ambiguously, or negatively by one who was so inclined. And in this regard, it is understandable that so many Christian writers did not view it as complimentary to Jesus and hence avoided calling attention to it.
‘he was the Christ’
On balance then, all this suggests that if Josephus wrote the phrase as it stands in Greek manuscripts of the Antiquities, then he probably would have meant to say that Jesus actually was the Christ, and this does not seem at all likely, especially given that Origen (c.248 ce), our earliest witness to book 18 of the Antiquities, twice states that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Christ.178 And even if Josephus felt that Jesus was some kind of lesser messianic figure presaging the coming of the actual Messiah (for certain ancient Jews did believe in pre-messianic figures) one would still think that Josephus would have spent more time talking about him.179 Consequently, this is the only part of the TF where the entire Greek tradition may have lost something,180 perhaps a term like ‘was called’ (λεγόμενος), which Josephus uses elsewhere for Jesus…
That Josephus originally said that Jesus ‘was thought to be’ or otherwise considered to be ‘the Christ’ is further supported by the nature of the extant Greek TF, which oddly uses the past tense to say that Jesus ‘was the Christ’, whereas if a Christian had fabricated the phrase wholesale, one would expect that the present tense ‘is’ would have been used, just as Christians traditionally proclaimed.202 This suggests that Josephus’ original phrasing, whatever it was, included the past tense. Moreover, such a reading that Jesus ‘was’ somehow ‘considered to be’ or ‘called’ the Christ implies a disagreement between what people thought of Jesus and what the author of the TF himself believed.
‘and when Pilate condemned him to the cross at the accusation of the first men among us’
…[A]s I show in Chapter 5, Josephus likely knew some of those ‘first men’ who accused Jesus, so it is quite probable that he could have written the phrase ‘among us’.
The TF… credits Jewish instigation in the form of lodging an accusation, but gives Pilate the responsibility for the actual deed.
‘For he appeared to them alive’
I suggest that the phrase ought to be translated not that ‘he appeared to them alive’, but rather, ‘he appeared to them to be alive’, or even ‘it seemed to them that he was alive’.247 In other words, I maintain that ϕαίνω parallels the English usage for the word ‘appear’ in that it can ambiguously refer to either (1) an event of actual appearing, or (2) an event appearing or seeming to be so (perhaps falsely). Thus, the TF may not state that Jesus actually appeared to the disciples, but only that it seemed that way to the disciples.
‘given that the divine prophets spoke these and ten thousand other wonders concerning him’
The exaggerated phrase ‘ten thousand other things’ (ἄλλα μυρία) is normal hyperbole for Josephus,280 and he uses the same phrasing twice elsewhere.281…
The same can be said for ‘divine’ (θεῖος), which Josephus deploys to refer to revered figures in Jewish tradition, as I mentioned above.284 He twice even uses θεῖος in conjunction with prophets: ‘as he was undeniably a divine prophet’ (ὢν δ’ οὗτος ὁ προϕήτης θεῖος ὁμολογουμένως)285 and ‘truly a divine and excellent prophet’ (θεῖον ἀληθῶς καὶ προϕήτην ἄριστον).286
…[I]t is unclear if the second half of the sentence is presented from the perspective of the disciples or from that of the writer. All that to say, the TF is not necessarily making any kind of definitive statement about what the Hebrew prophets said about Jesus, but may instead be placing such sentiments into the minds of the disciples — yet its ambiguous syntax leaves open the possibility that later readers might interpret the TF as affirming Jesus’ fulfillment of prophecies, as several later Christians would do.296
‘The tribe of the Christians, who were named from him, has not disappeared’
All told then, the phrase ‘tribe of the Christians’ in the TF seems very like something Josephus would say and much less like something a later Christian scribe would insert.
——————
Convinced? Still skeptical? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
vjtorley:
Isn’t it the scholarly consensus that Jesus existed as a historical figure? I know there are a few holdouts like Robert Price and Richard Carrier, but don’t almost all scholars accept that Jesus was a real person?
That’s not to downplay the importance of the TF, if it’s authentic, but I didn’t think there was much debate these days about the historicity of Jesus.
Maybe, though probably most people working on the existing records presume the existence of some model for what remains.
One can also presume that much written evidence that may once have existed has been destroyed or imaginatively edited.
Myself, I doubt any person or persons in real life bore much resemblance to the various interpretations put about since the third century.
Hi VJ
The editing story never made sense to me as there is no explanation how to change a written story once copies become public. Saying he was called the Christ also makes.
keiths,
Just finished “On the historicity of Jesus” and also “Jesus From Outer Space” by Richard Carrier. Please try giving JFOS a read (it’s a shorter version of Historicity). Totally outstanding book. The book has a whole section on TF and here are a couple of things I took away – both from that section and also from the book as a whole
1) If you erase the Jesus section from TF, the two sections before and after join together perfectly. i.e., it is clear a scribe inserted this text. The Jesus text itself does not flow in the overall text. ie., it looks like an insertion. You need to read the section in the context of the overall text
2) Carrier gives an example of another “biography” of a different person (a different Jesus?) that the same author wrote. It’s about the same length as the Jesus text. Carrier makes the very clear point that the style of the two “mini biographies” are completely different … the Jesus text is clearly written not by the original author. The first reads like an actual biography of an actual person. The TF reads like a paragraph in a fantasy novel.
3) Carrier’s argument – that the historicity of Jesus is at best highly doubtful (and not even as likely as that sounds) – is incredibly well supported, documented and researched. By the end of the JFOS book – if you still think there is a solid case for the historicity .. then you’ve definitely read a different book than I did!
Give it a go and see what you think!
keiths,
One other thought : Your use of the word “holdout” is interesting. It makes it sound like “everyone” used to think Jesus was a mythical figure but now we are just down to a handful of holdouts who believe that. The reality is exactly the polar opposite. Pretty much “everyone” (me included) was brought up believing Jesus to be a real person in history … it was something that I simply never questioned. At the very, very, very least – surely he was some kind of prophet/teacher even if heavily mythologized after?
Nope – I realized I was one of the holdouts, not the other way around.
“I need hardly point out that if the Testimonium Flavianum is authentic, it adds to the case for the historicity of Jesus”
So … one paragraph, written 60 years after the supposed death, with no sources, no references to any eyewitness accounts, nothing that hints where he got the information from, why he believes it is true and only this one reference … I mean … we are talking about the very son of god are we not?. Somehow this adds to the case for historicity? If there actually were any case at all – any corroborating evidence, letters, independent testimony, inscriptions … anything at all that would appear to provide evidence within the first 30 years after his “death” (if you believe revelation is the same thing as evidence, well….) then the beginning of the case would be there
The fact that this debate – about the TF itself – exists shows the utter paucity and total absence of any actual evidence or case for the historicity … not the other way around.
Hi SkepticCO,
I suggest you read Chapter 4 of Tom Schmidt’s book. It will dispel your doubts. You write:
Here’s a passage from Schmidt’s book which addresses this objection. I’ll leave it to you to judge if the author has a solid command of the literature:
SkepticCO:
By “holdouts” I just meant holdouts among scholars, not among the general public. I also wasn’t trying to say that the majority of scholars were mythicists at one point — far from it. I just meant that Carrier and Price are holdouts in the sense that they are refusing to go along with the scholarly consensus that Jesus was a real historical figure.
colewd:
Editing happened all the time in the ancient world. It’s not as if once a book was written and distributed, everyone everywhere became aware of it and its contents and were alert for any changes, especially since copies had to be made by hand. That, for instance, is why there are different biblical manuscripts and why there is obvious evidence of editing in the later ones.
Which raises the question: If an omnipotent, omniscient God is concerned with getting his message across via the Bible, why didn’t he prevent the editing from happening? Obvious answer: the Bible isn’t the word of God. It’s a human book, cobbled together from a bunch of other books, all written and edited by humans.
I’m not sure what you.
I guess “The Skeptical Zone” has become “The Gullible Zone”. Time to put this all in mothballs. I went back and consulted Carrier’s writing on this topic again and also watched the first part of the video
1) Using the word “Testimony” is insane … as the author says in the video, the TF was written in about 90AD. The interviewer is impressed with “how recently” it was written. Recent. 60 years after the fact. Testimony – the TF cites no sources, nothing that itself can be verified. How on earth can you not be skeptical based on this alone, about the TF?
2) As Carrier mentions, in the 3rdC, Origen spent a good deal of time scouring Josephus amongst other texts and the TF was never mentioned … so likely it did not exist in any version he had available to him then.
3) Regarding the placement. Carrier says, I think, something much simpler : Cut out the TF section and the two remaining sections run perfectly together. The author tries to justify its placement in a way where he tries to justify the overall placement of the story – not simply the fact that it obviously is inserted anew simply because it chops a section in half. He comes up with some vague justification about why the paragraph fits – completely omitting that it actually does not fit into the flow at all
4) He spent 10 years developing this? Carrier utterly destroys this in Historicity in a short section … pretty sure it did not require 10 years of research
5) Author touches on this but I didn’t see anything even slightly convincing. Josephus was a devout Jew and simply would not, in any way shape or form, have written this.
6) We have half a million words from Josephus and 20k words from Paul. Do you think it is possible – at all possible – that a scribe who wanted to insert a paragraph on Jesus could have found somewhere in his 500k words a couple of phrases to reuse?
7) I re-read Carrier’s passage regarding the paragraph Josephus wrote on Jesus ben Ananias (in an earlier book) – that story, if you read the text – just reads very differently in how he describes the details of what happens. Clearly was written by a different person than TF. And it has the bonus that it appears – obviously- that Mark borrowed some of this story to create the Jesus/scourging story
8) The fact is that “most mainstream scholars” now firmly believe the TF is a fraud. Carrier might be a holdout in believing Jesus is a myth, he is certainly not a holdout in believing the TF is a complete fraud. Given that TF is one of the very, very few things that could even remotely claim to be identifying Jesus outside the gospel .. .this does not exactly refute Carrier’s position
Read Jesus from Outer Space by Richard Carrier (btw – IMO the title will probably put off a lot of people but this is a very scholarly and extremely well researched book)
Seems to me this site (the skeptical zone) is now being used for christian apologetics.
keiths,
What is the evidence you have that this historical book was edited so radically and the changes became what we see today?
Beyond the correctly stated fact that yes, books were edited extensively and commonly so, Origen the 3rd century christian scholar scoured the available literature, including the TF, specifically looking for anything and everything that could support the historicity of Jesus. Now perhaps he simply missed the paragraph in TF, could well be. Or perhaps it simply was not there when he was doing the scouring.
GIven that it was extremely common practice to edit and update books (look at the history of Mark after all … look at the history of every single text in the new testament and see if you think that editing and changing was a rare occurrence) it is likely TF is a later edit.
If there was truly outstanding evidence of the historicity of Jesus – the kind of evidence we would expect if an actual god roamed the earth … there would not be this extreme fascination with one single paragraph. This simply illustrated the utter paucity of any kind of evidence of the historicity.
So what is the evidence that it was not edited?
Hi SkepticCO,
I don’t know why you think this post is an exercise in Christian apologetics, given that I explicitly state in my OP that Josephus is ambiguous about Jesus, being highly uncertain as to whether his “incredible deeds” were miraculous signs wrought by a prophet of God or sorcery performed by a dangerous magician and false prophet.
Concerning Origen’s remarks on the Testimonium Flavianum, Schmidt discusses them in the first chapter of his book, reaching the following conclusion:
Schmidt also quotes from other early Christian authors who had the passage of the Testimonium Flavianum in front of them, but didn’t think it painted a very flattering portrait of Jesus. This adds to his case that the passage, although authentic, has been badly mistranslated in modern English.
Concerning the supposedly unnatural placement of the story in Josephus’ Antiquities, Schmidt makes the following observation, which you have yet to address:
I’m afraid I haven’t read Carrier’s book, Jesus from Outer Space, but Paul Clark, a teacher, novelist and member of Humanists UK, has reviewed it here. I’ll just quote what he says about Carrier’s discussion of Josephus. Readers can form their own conclusions:
Cheers.
P.S. I forgot to cite the following paragraph from chapter 4 of Schmidt’s book, in which he conducts a stylometric analysis of Josephus’ passage about Jesus, which tells against the hypothesis that the Testimonium Flavianum was a forgery:
Hi keiths. You write:
I agree that the TF establishes very little about the historicity of Jesus, but it does appear to confirm the New Testament accounts that Jesus healed people (giving rise to the miracle/magic stories about him), that the Jewish authorities brought him before Pilate, that his followers believed he had risen from the dead, and that he was believed by his followers to be the Christ and to be the fulfillment of Jewish prophecies. Cheers.
Could be said about everyone.
My authority is The Life of Brian.
Am I wrong in thinking the biblical Jesus disparaged miracles as evidence of divinity?
petrushka:
At times he did, but at other times, he didn’t. I know that he scolded some people for demanding miracles as evidence, but he scolded others for not believing despite having miracles as evidence.
ETA: An example of each:
Matthew 11:20-21:
Mark 8:11-12:
colewd:
I was responding to this statement of yours:
There is an easy and obvious explanation of how that is possible.
An ancient author writes down a story. There is only one copy at this point. Copies are made by hand — the Xerox monk is only a fictional character, after all — and those handwritten copies begin to circulate. Other people copy those copies, and the new copies begin to circulate. It’s a laborious, slow process. There are no printing presses, no photocopiers, no internet. If you want to read the book, you need to get your hands on a handwritten copy, and they are few and precious. You can’t just walk over to the bookstore or library and obtain a paperback version.
When you finally get your hands on a copy, how are you going to know whether it’s been edited? What are you going to compare it to? And if you decide to copy it, making a few editorial changes, how are future readers going to know that you’ve edited it if they have nothing to compare it to?
Nothing is preventing those edits from taking place, and nothing is preventing copying errors from happening, either. Once those changes have taken place, future copies of the affected manuscript will also contain those changes. It’s analogous to offspring inheriting mutations from their parents, and in fact scholars actually use phylogenetic tools to recreate the “evolutionary trees” of manuscripts. See Phylogenetics of artificial manuscripts.
Contrast that with the modern day, where we have printing presses and electronic distribution and copyright laws. It’s much more difficult now to change a book after copies are made public — people will notice — but it wasn’t very difficult in antiquity.
vjtorley,
From your post : “Skeptical? I was, too, until I watched the video of Schmidt being interviewed by Christian pastor and apologist …” from which I infer you went from somebody who was skeptical to somebody who is convinced and “I need hardly point out that if the Testimonium Flavianum is authentic, it adds to the case for the historicity of Jesus.” So even after the fact that the author (nor Josephus) offers no verifiable evidence, that Josephus does not offer any sources or have the interest to followup on what is probably the most incredible story ever … even after all that you are not skeptical? But what is convincing to you is a single paragraph, written 60 years after an event, and then analyzed 2000 years later in a 10 year study?
The son of god – no less – comes down to walk among us, raises the dead, performs miracles, preaches to hundreds and thousands, has zombies walking around jerusalem right after his death. And … there is huge excitement because 60 years after all this happened one paragraph out of half a million words makes mention of it … and “therefore Jesus must be true?”.
You would kind of think that Josephus might have followed it up with “…. and this was such incredibly amazing that I had to find out more, so I went and interviewed the sons and daughters of the thousands, and testimony after testimony convinced me that this is true; and it was so incredible I went to jersualem to interview all those who met the zombie hoard and then went to visit the empty graves” etc etc etc. Nope guess he didn’t think it was that exciting after all.
From your reponse to Keiths : “I agree that the TF establishes very little about the historicity of Jesus, but it does appear to confirm the New Testament accounts that Jesus healed people”. Are you saying that with a straight face or are you trying to bait people (like me)? This one paragraph (TF) written 60 years after the event “confirms new testament accounts”. You must be having fun with this! And you are getting the rise out of me that you probably want!
From our friend Wikipedia : “The earliest Greek manuscript of Books 11–20 of the Antiquities dates from the eleventh century, ….. However, the manuscript tradition is complex and many manuscripts are incomplete”
So … TF was written in about 90AD, but the earliest version that exists today is from …. 1,000 years later? Is that a correct understanding of the Wikipedia article and of the history? And we are still convinced the TF is authentic? (The TF is in book 18 apparently)
For anyone interested, a translation of the entire Antiquities is easily available. I downloaded a copy for Kindle $0 (I had some credits … i think it was just a dollar or two at the most). Book 18 chapter 3 is where TF occurs
1) Pilate gets significantly more space in the book series than Jesus. I did a quick search in the book and there are 24 separate references to him
2) You don’t have to read far … just read from the start of chapter 3 onwards … you’ll get the gist of how he writes. A lot of details about people. Example : Right after TF there is a paragraph with this in it : “There was at Rome a woman whose name was Paulina; one who, on account of the dignity of her ancestors, and by the regular conduct of a virtuous life, had a great reputation: she was also very rich; and although she was of a beautiful countenance, and in that flower of her age wherein women are the most gay, yet did she lead a life of great modesty.” this goes on for a while – the section in which Paulina appears is about double the entire TF
read for yourself – you can delete the TF and before and after sections run perfectly together. Jesus appears out of nowhere and instead of the kinds of details you get about Paulina, JosephusFraud appears to breeze right over this incredible story with zero details and a quick resurrection. Can you seriously not be skeptical? It’s right there, read it for yourself.
keiths,
The evidence I have seen from the Dead Sea scrolls is that the basic content does not change from the early manuscripts to the current versions. A “just so” story is not evidence.
SkepticCO,
That the basic theme is consistent with other ancient documents.
colewd:
You just confirmed that my “just so” story isn’t a “just so” story. Edits do take place after copies are in circulation, contrary to your earlier claim:
This isn’t something I made up. Edits happen, scholars have confirmed this (as you now seem to acknowledge), and I supplied an explanation of how this happens — an explanation that you claimed was nonexistent.
You backed off that claim. You now concede that edits happen, but are arguing that the “basic content” remains unchanged. But why? What prevents edits from affecting “basic content”, whatever “basic content” means?
The answer is that nothing prevents it, and my explanation shows why. If readers have nothing to compare a manuscript against, they won’t know that it has been edited, and that’s true regardless of whether or not the edits affect “basic content”.
For evidence of edits, you need go no further than the first two chapters of the very first book of the Bible, Genesis. Genesis 1 presents one account of creation, and Genesis 2 presents a different account. They contradict each other.
The scholarly consensus is that an editor glued the two creation accounts together in the book of Genesis. If the story of creation doesn’t count as “basic content”, I don’t know what does. So yes, edits can affect basic content.
colewd,
Lest you be tempted to redefine “basic content” as “basic theological content”, even that is affected. Do you know about the notorious “Johannine Comma”?
Here’s 1 John 5:7-8 in the King James Version:
Here’s what the earliest manuscripts actually say:
The part I’ve struck out is the Johannine Comma. It’s an explicitly Trinitarian statement, and it would therefore have enormous theological importance if it were authentic — but it isn’t.
Edits can not only affect “basic content”, they can also affect “basic theological content”.
ETA: Which raises the question: if the Bible is the word of God, as you claim (which is actually an insult to him), why does he allow these changes to occur? Why doesn’t he set the record straight? Why doesn’t he care whether people get an accurate version of his message?
The answer, of course, is that the Bible isn’t the word of God. It’s a collection of books written by humans and edited by humans, and it was humans who decided what to write, how to edit it, and which books to include and which to leave out of the Bible.
A foolish consistency…
petrushka:
…isn’t a hobgoblin for someone who is supposedly God. It’s a job requirement. That’s why people like colewd bend over backwards trying to claim that the Bible presents a unified message from cover to cover. It doesn’t, obviously.
Sarcasm
One thing that stands out is the boggling paucity of evidence for anything that happened during the 50 or 60 years prior to the Jewish War of 66-70. There is no verified extra-biblical material, so all we have is the bible. And as Carrier and others note, the biblical “evidence” for a historical Jesus consists of some of the letters of Paul, and then we have the gospels. It’s important to note that Paul’s Jesus was entirely celestial, a spirit, not a human being, who never actually came down to earth. And Paul’s Jesus bears no plausible resemblance to Mark’s Jesus, who reads more like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill.
Many if not most of Paul’s letters were not preserved for some reason, and those that were preserved say absolutely nothing about Jesus the man – no birth, no death (except a symbolic death), no family, no friends, no physical description. Mostly Paul is concerned with church procedure. One can’t help but wonder if the Pauline letters not preserved were more explicit about Jesus never being an actual historical person.
So, given that essentially ALL writings by the Jewish sect that evolved into Christianity have been lost, and the gospels have no known authors, and cite no sources, and even Greek and Roman histories that ought to mention the birth, death, or ministry of Christ have very suspicious “holes” during the relevant times, leave Christian historical scholars grasping for anything, just anything.
But hey, look, here is a paragraph in Josephus mentioning historical Jesus. Of course it’s not written in the style of Josephus, and it’s stuck awkwardly in the middle of an unrelated narrative, and there is some reasonable indication that it was inserted much later, but still, for the Christian historian, any port in a storm.
And let’s pay no attention to the notion that, IF there had been a historical Christ, there would have been enormous evidence, most of a century worth written by Jews known to be verbose. And all of that material would surely have been preserved, since it would document extensively what the early church was claiming. But instead, not only is there nothing to work with, but most secondary sources (which would have mentioned the primary sources) have themselves been modified where they haven’t been lost. Even some tertiary sources, which would have mentioned the secondary sources, have odd “holes” where references (or even discussion) would be expected.
So what seems most plausible today is that the early church adopted Mark’s story (and failed to preserve anything else) and went about a remarkably thorough and consistent job of making sure that no material even implying indirectly otherwise was kept. If Jesus had existed, congenial material would have been extensive and preserved – but if Jesus did NOT exist, it would be necessary to create a documentation desert, eliminating anything that would have HAD to mention Jesus’ ministry if there ever was one – and anything referencing that.. Silence has a thousand explanations.
So the intense focus of Christian historians on the TF is what we get today.
Raphael Lataster has argued that this is strictly a debate among atheists, since Christians cannot be expected to doubt that their entire faith rests on an implausible, poorly supported fiction.
(Note: Jesus from Outer Space is a reference to the cosmology of the day and the region, which held that the “firmament” was located between the tops of the highest clouds, and the moon. Down here on earth was merely an imperfect copy of the firmament. Paul’s Jesus was a spirit that descended from a higher heaven, took on a human form to trick Satan, was killed and resurrected (which turned the spirit into the Christ), and returned back up to a higher level. So Paul’s depiction took place in what we now consider outer space.)
I just took the time to watch the entire video end to end … was really hoping there would even be a small nugget in there that might be interesting. Nope.
I think towards the end he actually manages to provide strong circumstantial evidence against his position, as follows :He claims that Josephus’ account is probably true also because when J. was around 15 years old (i.e, early 50s) and was walking around Jerusalem he MUST have been bumping into people all the time who actually knew Jesus – or – even better – were actually personally present at his trial. People who were there! Who witnessed it all!
So let’s say that actually happened (he has no actual evidence for this, he just thinks it is the case, by which I mean he never mentions “…. and I met Zachariah who was present at the trial of Jesus and he told me” or anything like that. Anyway, back to the point … so all these many many people he must have met – they must have told him the most incredible stories … I mean, really amazing stories that anyone in their right mind who is a historian is probably going to write an entire bibles-worth of content on just this alone.
Nope. the TF is 128 words long (in the english translation I am reading). Pilate gets 4x the words in the previous two paragraphs. In the paragraph following the TF is a story about a woman named Paulina – she gets 2x the words.
Anyone who finds this “proof” in the least credible has left their thinking cap at the door It’s now confirmed. the “Skeptical Zone” is indeed “The Gullible Zone”
Flint,
Yep – “clutching at straws”. Josephus alone wrote 500k words and only 128 of them in the TF. You would have thought there would be billions upon billions (well … a lot!) of letters, books, plays, poems and so on written about the events – “Dear aunt Freda … no idea what happened today but suddenly the sky went dark and I heard a voice booming from the heavens” …. “Dear aunt frieda …. was walking along the shore today when I came across half a million people all looking out to sea and I coudl hear this chap preaching – his voice was incredible – such projection!”
A video by biblical scholar Dan McClellan on mythicism:
Did Jesus really exist?
He agrees with the scholarly consensus, which is that Jesus existed but that much of what is said about him in the Gospels is fictional.