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Flavius Josephus was a Jewish aristocrat (AD 37–100) who witnessed firsthand the great Jewish war with Rome. After surrendering to the Roman general Vespasian (soon Emperor Vespasian) in Galilee, Josephus was granted a pension and a home in Rome, where he wrote nearly half a million words: narrating the events of the war (The Jewish War), telling his life story (Life), and recounting the entire history of the Jewish people in 20 volumes (Jewish Antiquities). Josephus is our most important historical source for the Roman East—Syria, Galilee, and Judea—offering priceless insights into politics, warfare, religion, and daily life we’d otherwise never know. I’ve taught about Josephus’s life and works for more than 20 years—first in secular settings like Macquarie University and the University of Sydney, and now at Wheaton College. But Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ by T. C. Schmidt, associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, has forced me to rewrite my lectures—and it might just have changed my mind. It seems that a controversial passage about Jesus’s resurrection might be original after all. Contested Passage Of everything Josephus wrote, a single paragraph has been analyzed and debated more than all the rest. Those 90 words are even given their own name in scholarship: the Testimonium Flavianum—the testimony of Flavius Josephus about Jesus. It appears in Book 18 of Jewish Antiquities. Here’s the standard translation from the Loeb Classical Library, with brackets around the words I’ve described for decades as “dodgy.” (Not exactly a technical term, but I always thought it apt.) About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, [if indeed one ought to call him a man]. For he was one who wrought surprising feats 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 Messiah.] When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. [For he appeared to them alive again on the third day, the divine prophets having foretold these and countless other marvellous things about him.] And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. Since a famous 1987 article by Géza Vermes (professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University), the scholarly consensus about this paragraph has been that Josephus himself wrote a brief, neutral—or perhaps negative—remark about Jesus, which was later “improved” by a Christian scribe copying out Josephus’s works in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century. It seems that a controversial passage about Jesus’s resurrection might be original after all. A major article by Cambridge University’s James Carleton Paget in 2001 seemed to seal this conclusion, just as I was beginning to teach this material at university. It’s true a few “crackpots” insisted the whole paragraph was authentic and some “atheist onliners” argued the whole thing was a fabrication, but the settled mainstream view seemed most reasonable. This is what I’ve been teaching students for years. So I was skeptical when I first heard that Schmidt was bringing out Josephus and Jesus, the first major work on the topic in decades. I knew it was peer-reviewed—published by Oxford University Press, no less—but I couldn’t imagine how anything new could be said after Vermes, Carleton Paget, John P. Meier, Graham Stanton, and a host of others had all landed on roughly the same view. I, too, had published several pieces on the Testimonium Flavianum that echo this consensus. But I (and the consensus) might be wrong. Schmidt has done something new—in fact, four new things—and it invites a rethinking of the case. Manuscript Evidence Schmidt does a terrific job in the early chapters of his book chasing down all the manuscripts that contain the Testimonium Flavianum. Josephus wrote in Greek, but his work—at least parts of it—was quickly translated into Latin, as well as Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic. Unlike most classical and New Testament scholars, Schmidt seems comfortable swimming in all these linguistic oceans. The upshot of his analysis is that we may have to rethink a key line. In the traditional Testimonium Flavianum, the statement “He was the Christ” is the giveaway, so it was thought, that this couldn’t have been written by a non-Christian Jew like Josephus. The expression “a (mere) wise man” earlier in the paragraph fits Josephus’s likely view, but a declaration of messianic identity is out of place. But Schmidt notes that Latin and Syriac manuscripts of this passage don’t have the clear affirmation “He was the Christ” but instead the more doubtful “He was believed to be [Latin] / thought to be [Syriac] the Christ.” Given the early date of these renditions—AD 300s—and the unlikelihood that any Latin or Syriac Christian copyist would demote Jesus, it seems reasonable to conclude this was what Josephus wrote. In the Greek copying tradition, a single verb (legomenos, “called,” perhaps) appears to have dropped out, either by accident or intent. Word-Frequency Evidence Schmidt also applies stylometry to the Testimonium Flavianum. Stylometry is the mathematical (i.e., computer-assisted) analysis of an author’s vocabulary and syntax. It allows scholars to create a kind of “linguistic fingerprint” for an author. It isn’t just for ancient texts. Researchers at Northeastern University, for instance, have used the same technique to test whether Little Women author Louisa May Alcott secretly wrote a series of gothic tales under the pseudonym “E. H. Gould.” By digitizing 19th-century magazines and running them through algorithms that identify each writer’s linguistic fingerprint, they can often make the call. Why is this relevant to Josephus? Some scholars have long claimed—based on general impressions—that the famous paragraph about Jesus uses odd words found rarely or nowhere else in Josephus’s many works. Schmidt shows this scholarly hunch to be wrong. It turns out Josephus had an enormous Greek vocabulary: He uses a unique term roughly every 87 words throughout his corpus. Having a unique word, and a couple of rare words, in a 90-word paragraph is exactly what we’d expect. Schmidt even examined Josephus’s rate of using common words such as “and,” “or,” and “the”—and the Testimonium Flavianum shows the same frequencies as the rest of his nearly half-million-word output. Josephus’s fingerprints are all over this contested paragraph. Greek Evidence Schmidt offers a Greek-language insight into the most obvious Christian interpolation: the statement typically translated “he appeared to them alive again on the third day.” The key verb is phainō—“to appear.” Vermes, Carleton Paget, and others have reasonably noted that a non-Christian Jew like Josephus would never have said Jesus actually “appeared alive.” That sounds like a Christian addition. Josephus’s fingerprints are all over this contested paragraph. But what if phainō in this context carries one of its other connotations, well attested in Greek writings from Plato (fourth century BC) to Origen (third century AD)—namely, to indicate “something seeming or appearing to be so (but which may not actually be so),” as Schmidt puts it (97)? That would mean Josephus isn’t claiming Jesus really was alive, any more than earlier in the paragraph he was claiming Jesus was actually the Christ. Rather, he’s reporting, in a noncommittal or even skeptical way, that “it seemed” to Jesus’s followers he was alive, just as they “believed” or “thought” Jesus to be the Christ. Schmidt gives examples of this usage in Josephus. For instance, in his Jewish Antiquities (2.35), Josephus retells the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. The brothers put blood on his clothes “so that Joseph might appear [phainō] to Jacob to have been killed by beasts.” This is clearly an example of something that seems to be the case but is false. Schmidt suggests the remark about Jesus is similar: It merely appeared to Jesus’s followers that he was alive in fulfillment of their Scriptures. Such a statement would be entirely plausible. Public Claims Virtually all historians today, regardless of their religious commitment, agree that Jesus’s resurrection was the central public claim of Christians in this period and, equally, that certain Jewish elites were disputing the claim (see Matt. 28:11–15). The statement “it seemed to them that he was alive again” fits Josephus’s situation well. And such a noncommittal or skeptical way of referencing the resurrection is unlikely to have been added by a later Christian copyist trying to ventriloquize correct doctrine through Josephus’s lips. Schmidt’s own rendition of the full (and perhaps authentic) Testimonium Flavianum is this: And in this time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher of men who receive truisms with pleasure. And he brought over many from amongst the Jews and many from amongst 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 amongst 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 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. (204) An argument supported by the above three forms of evidence would have been well worth publishing for scholarly consideration. Nevertheless, Schmidt offers a fourth, remarkable contribution. Insider Connections When I interviewed Schmidt for the Undeceptions podcast, he told me he’d initially planned to leave the book as simply a fresh way to read the manuscripts and language of the Testimonium Flavianum. Yet, he told me, one day he ventured down a rabbit hole. He started to ask, What relationships did Josephus personally have with the “first men amongst us” in Judea in the AD 40s, 50s, and 60s when he was in Judea and Galilee? The results might be the most significant part of the book. I’ve often cautioned my students that, while Josephus probably wrote a neutral or skeptical sentence or two about Jesus, we could never know where he got his information—public rumor, Christian sources, or some official non-Christian channel. Schmidt may have found the most plausible answer. He has mapped Josephus’s remarkable network of relationships with the very Jerusalem elites present at both Jesus’s trial (around AD 30) and the later execution of his half-brother James (in AD 62, an event Josephus records in Antiquities 20). As Schmidt argues, it turns out Josephus moved within the priestly dynasty directly connected to both deaths. His wartime commander was Ananus II (Ananus the Younger), the high priest who ordered James’s execution. Ananus II was the son of Ananus I, Ananus the Elder, the former high priest who presided over Jesus’s interrogation (known as Annas in John 18:13). Ananus the Elder’s daughter married Caiaphas, the high priest named in the Gospels. Ananus II was therefore Caiaphas’s brother-in-law. Luke 3:2 and John 18:13 place Ananus and Caiaphas together at the apex of the priestly establishment. Josephus twice calls Ananus II “the oldest of the chief priests” and notes his death in AD 68–69. Ananus II was likely in his 70s or 80s when he died, making him in his 30s or 40s around AD 30, fully adult and influential at the time of Jesus’s trial. Therefore, Schmidt plausibly speculates that Ananus II (the Younger) might even have been a member of the Sanhedrin that handed Jesus over to Pilate. Whatever we make of that suggestion, Schmidt is right to note that Jewish law required families to keep the Passover meal in the patriarch’s house. This means Ananus II would have been at his father’s house on the night Jesus was brought there for questioning (John 18:13). Therefore, Schmidt writes, “Ananus II surely would have observed the portion of the proceedings held in his family’s patriarchal residence” (192). That seems solid to me. The upshot of this complicated discussion of priestly family connections is that when Josephus wrote in the Testimonium Flavianum that Jesus had been accused by “the first men among us,” he was plausibly drawing not on Christian rumor but on the recollections of Jerusalem leaders he knew personally. Largely Convincing Josephus and Jesus offers academics, pastors, public advocates for Christianity a fresh look at one of the most hotly debated passages among ancient documents. I’m about 78 percent convinced by this book (that’s an excellent mark in Australia—less so in America, I’ve learned!). What’s my remaining 22 percent of doubt based on? I have quibbles—for example, around Schmidt’s discussion of the phrase paradoxa erga (“baffling deeds”)—but much of my hesitation isn’t intellectual. It’s sociological or psychological. I’ve spent my career trying to ensure my teaching about the historical Jesus stays within the bounds of mainstream (secular) scholarship, and Schmidt’s book is a major, serious challenge to the consensus on the Testimonium Flavianum. It won’t completely convince everyone, but if I’m any indication, it could partly convince many. I might owe my former students an apology.