Did Josephus know people who were present at Jesus's trial?

This is part two of Peter Williams's interview with Dr Tom C. Schmidt about his new book, 'Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One they Call Christ'. In this second episode they discuss whether Josephus could have known people who were present at Jesus's trial. 

In the first episode, they tackled the question of whether Josephus's writing about Jesus was edited by Christians to sound more like the biblical account, or whether it could in fact have been written by Josephus (you can catch up on the previous episode wherever you get your podcasts from or watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn1P0krloq0). 

 Tom's book has been published online for free: https://academic.oup.com/book/60034 It will also be available in print from 3rd June 2025. 

You can find out more on Tom's website at josephusandjesus.com/

Transcript

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So welcome to the

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Tyndale House podcast, my name is Peter Williams, Principal at Tyndale House.

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And, glad to be your host today and very glad

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to have a special guest, Professor Tom Schmidt.

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Back for a second

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blast, let's say, of his really phenomenal

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new book, on Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence [For the One they Call Christ].

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So it's really, something that we, were looking at last episode, how,

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Josephus, this

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early Christian, historian, actually writes about Jesus

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in two passages and one of those has been disputed for many years.

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And Professor Schmidt, Tom, has made an argument that actually,

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the words really do come from, Josephus.

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And so that's really, great.

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And, Tom, why don't you just tell us a little bit,

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introducing your book, some people may not have got the first episode.

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Tell us what your book’s about.

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And then we're going to dive into Josephus actually knowing people

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who had met Jesus.

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So let's, just start off with your book in general.

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Yeah.

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The book, the title is Josephus and Jesus New Evidence for the One Called Christ.

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Josephus is a Jewish historian.

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He wrote in the first century, late first century, and he mentions Jesus.

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But the passage is very controversial.

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Most scholars think it's been doctored

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or interpolated, contaminated by later Christian scribes.

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So my book, I try to see if I can authenticate the passage,

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which we talked about last episode, which I think I do, successfully.

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And then in part two, I try to trace out Josephus’s

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pathways of knowledge about Jesus.

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How did he learn about Jesus? Where is he getting his information from?

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And that's where I, I show that Josephus was, was, it turns out,

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intimately connected with those who were associated with Jesus's trial.

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So you've got a 300

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page or plus, Oxford University Press book

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that people can also freely download which is very enlightened.

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And that will go into some of the technicalities we've already seen,

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you make an argument that the style fits with the style of Josephus

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and, just to remind people of what this, passage says.

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So it's in Josephus’s big work

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The[ Jewish] Antiquities, 20 books of of that history of the Jews.

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And in Book 18,

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so as we're getting near to the end, he talks about

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a man, ‘about this time there lived

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Jesus, a wise man, if one should, ought to call him a man.

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For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher

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of many of such people as accept the truth gladly.

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He won over many Jews and many Greeks.

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He was the Messiah.

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When Pilot, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us.

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(And that's a phrase we're going to come back to in

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this episode) men of the highest standing amongst us,

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had condemned him to be crucified,

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those who had in the first place come to love him

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did not give up their affection for him.

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On the third day he appeared to them restored to life,

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for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous

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things about him. And the tribe of Christians so-called after him,

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has still to this day not disappeared.’

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So it sounds in that translation that I was reading, which is not Tom's

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translation, it's the Loeb translation.

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So, you can go and get that. It’s quite a standard translation.

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Sounds more Christian, than it actually is.

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Tom argues that it's,

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some of those phrases have been a bit overegged in translations.

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And one of the things you do in your book

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that's fascinating is to sort of map out,

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Josephus’s LinkedIn profile,

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I suppose. You know, who he knew,

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and how that affects how we should read this stuff.

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So why don't you take us through that argument?

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Josephus, I mean, it turns out, was a man of enormous

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interpersonal connections in first-century Jerusalem.

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He was from an eminent priestly family.

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He was a priest.

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His father and mother were of royal descent.

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His father was of high priestly descent, and he was rubbing shoulders

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with the best and brightest of his age, and those

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who were older than him from a very young age.

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And, he, you know, he talks about meeting the chief priests.

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He knew high priests.

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He knew the head of the Sanhedrin.

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He knew members of the Herodian dynasty.

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He met the Empress. He met the Emperor.

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I mean, this guy was as connected as you can get.

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But he also was stationed in Galilee for three years during the Jewish War.

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And, your listeners will recognize this.

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He visited places like Capernaum, Cana in Galilee,

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Tiberius.

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He went he was stationed in Sepphoris, which was three miles

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down the road from Nazareth.

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So he has, spending his life,

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He's born in 37 AD in Jerusalem, growing up

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in Jerusalem in the 30s, 40s and 50s, stationed in Galilee

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later on. He's he's literally spending his whole life

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where Jesus had ministered just one, two, three decades before.

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So it's at least plausible that he would encounter people who who knew Jesus.

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But I, I try in my book in in chapters five and six to show why

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actually, I think that that we can show that he did

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he did know people who who knew Jesus.

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Why don't you take us into that argument?

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Well, if you read the paragraph,

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his testimony about Jesus, it's called the Testimonium Flavianum.

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If you read that paragraph carefully, he says it was the first men

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who accused Jesus before Pontius Pilate,

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and that that word, first men is prōtoi in Greek.

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And if you read with care, you see that in Josephus’s autobiography

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He says repeatedly that he knew the prōtoi in Jerusalem.

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He met them.

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In fact, he says in 51 or 52 AD,

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he was continually meeting with the chief priests and the prōtoi

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And, it's just simple logic to conclude that, I mean,

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if 20 years previously, Josephus says in 30 AD, 33 AD,

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the first men accused Jesus, and then 20 years later,

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Josephus is saying that I knew the first men.

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It's only reasonable to conclude that he probably knew

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some of the people who were part of the trial of Jesus.

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But that's not everything he says.

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He says that, not that it was the first men

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that was the first men among us who, who accused Jesus.

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And that phrase par’ hēmin in Greek,

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Josephus loves that phrase, he uses it 50 other times.

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The question is, what does he mean?

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Does he mean like just a generic, you know, first men of the Jews?

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Is that what that means, or is he trying to indicate a closer relationship?

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And I think when you look at the dozens of times he uses

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that phrase, it's clear that that this is meant to mark

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a direct personal interaction, a direct knowledge of something.

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To put it simply,

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he's claiming to have known some of these first men,

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and given his background, that's very plausible.

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I mean, he knew the chief priests and the high priests in the Sanhedrin.

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These are people associated with with the the trial of Jesus in the Gospels.

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So in part, I lay that foundation and that,

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I think, gets us to a reasonable amount of probability.

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But, in, in chapter six, like you said, I, I do the, the LinkedIn Facebook thing

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where I track Josephus’s social network and I try to actually find names of people

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who were, at the trial of Jesus or reasonably could be expected

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to be at the trial of Jesus, whom Josephus also knew and, that's

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where I, I there's some really, remarkable stuff that comes out of this.

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Josephus is very well connected.

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Probably the best candidate for someone

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whom Josephus knew who is at the trial of Jesus,

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is Josephus’s own commander in the Jewish war.

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His, Josephus was one of seven generals in the Jewish War.

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And then there were two supreme

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commanders, and one of them is his name is Ananus the second.

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And he was a high priest in 62 AD he was very old.

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Josephus says three times,

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He was the oldest of the chief priests in 69 AD.

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so this guy would have been in his 30s or 40s when Jesus was crucified.

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And it turns out that Ananus

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the second’s brother-in-law, was Caiaphas,

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the man who had Jesus crucified, the high priest and his his father

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was Annas, the high priest, who also was involved in the trial of Jesus.

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Yeah.

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So we've already got like Josephus’s commander was was the son

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and brother-in-law of the gentlemen who, who who accused Jesus before Pilate.

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And so, so just to dig down there.

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So Ananus and Annas are very similar names.

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They’re sort of related one partly different ways of rendering the same name

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Hannan in Greek.

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And one of

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the points you make that’s fascinating is that, of course,

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Jesus is, the trial is on the eve of Passover,

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and that's when you're supposed to be at your dad's house.

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So when you've got Jesus going to Annas’s house

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in the record of the trial, then guess who is going to be there?

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You know, everyone's,

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gathered together at that time.

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And so it's almost inevitable that,

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this man who is Josephus’s boss

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at one stage was actually at the trial,

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and, you go into that and some, some other sort of candidates as well.

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Do you want to talk through those? Yes.

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There's several other candidates.

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If you read, the book of Acts in the early chapters,

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Gamaliel.

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Rabbi Gamaliel, he presides over the trial of the apostles.

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yeah, we say Gamaliel in my my country, but that's fine.

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Gamaliel. Yeah.

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And and he, we know him from the Jewish Mishnah and Talmud.

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He was the head of the Sanhedrin.

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Peter says you crucified.

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You murdered Jesus.

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So Gamaliel clearly had a hand in the trial.

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Josephus knows he, the son of Gamaliel.

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He knows his son.

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And so we can say the same thing about, Simon is his name,

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about about Simon, as we can about Josephus’s commander.

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That in 30 AD

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on the Passover, according to Jewish law, these men who are known to Josephus,

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would have been required to be in Jerusalem, where Jesus was.

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They would have been required

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to be in the house of their father celebrating Passover.

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And where was Jesus brought?

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The Gospels say he was brought into the house

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of Annas, the father of Josephus’s commander.

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Exactly where in the same time, same place where Josephus’s

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commander was supposed to have been in accordance with Old Testament law.

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And, we can say the same thing, a similar thing about Josephus’s

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acquaintance Simon.

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He would have been in the house

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of his father, Gamaliel, while he was called to the trial of Jesus.

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We can't be certain if Simon followed him there.

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He probably would have been an adult.

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He, Simon became the leader of the Sanhedrin later on.

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So he would have had very good reasons to be at the Sanhedrin trial.

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But nevertheless, his his his acquaintance Simon would have seen his father

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coming and going to the trial of Jesus that night.

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T: And there's other candidates, too, you know P: Let's let's keep going.

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I mean, people are going to want to follow up these leads.

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So, so, yeah.

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P: You got another one? T: He knew a high priest named Joshua.

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He was one of the high priests. You know, there's only,

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like, 15 high priests between, you know, 30 AD and 70 AD.

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So the fact that Josephus knows two or three of these guys is quite remarkable.

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And he even calls the high priest Joshua

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his friend.

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He was quite close with him. And,

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Joshua

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married into an illustrious high priestly family.

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He became high priest himself.

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And, and again, you know, the trial of Jesus, the Gospels

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say that all the chief priests were there, that the all the Sanhedrin was there.

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We know from the Mishnah and the Talmud that at a trial of a false prophet,

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which is what Jesus was accused of, that the entire Sanhedrin was required

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to be present.

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And, this happened in Jerusalem on the Passover, where all,

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all, faithful Jews were supposed to be present anyway.

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So so, we have very good reasons for suspecting that

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Joshua would have been called to the trial of Jesus.

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Certainly have known about it, have known all about it while it was happening.

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There's other candidates, too.

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These are not quite as likely, but they're still

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they're still quite intriguing. For me,

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my favourite of the remaining is, you know, the famous story

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of the daughter of Herodias who is dancing for the head of John the Baptist.

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The Gospels don't tell us her name, but Josephus does.

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He says that Herodias had one daughter and her name was Salome.

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And Salome went on to to marry Aristobulus.

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He was another Herodian.

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You know, the Herodians all intermarried, all the cousins were marrying each other.

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And, they both co-reigned for a very long time.

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Aristobulus lived into the 90s.

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And Salome lived until at least the late 60s.

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And Josephus knew,

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Aristobulus and Salome's son.

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So he knew that the son of the lady who danced for the head of John the Baptist.

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And there's some scholars, hypothesise that he actually knew Aristobulus

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and Salome themselves directly and clearly he was capable of this.

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He was well positioned to do that.

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And, both of those individuals, Salome and Aristobulus,

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would have been well placed to be a part of the trial of Jesus.

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Because what does Luke say?

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That Jesus was also brought to the house of Herod the Tetrarch on the Passover.

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He's the familial patriarch.

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That's where the Herodians would have gathered for Passover,

00:14:36:11 - 00:14:40:05
which means Salome, the daughter-in-law, would have, the stepdaughter,

00:14:40:20 - 00:14:44:12
and Aristobulus would have been there when Jesus was brought there.

00:14:44:12 - 00:14:48:12
So so you can trace out all of these connections quite thoroughly.

00:14:48:19 - 00:14:51:12
And, you know, one candidate that I only

00:14:51:12 - 00:14:55:06
briefly mentioned, but one candidate is just Josephus’s father.

00:14:55:06 - 00:14:58:20
You know, he was 25 years old when Jesus was crucified.

00:14:58:21 - 00:15:00:11
He was an eminent priest.

00:15:00:11 - 00:15:02:12
He was in Jerusalem.

00:15:02:12 - 00:15:06:08
He he would have, you know, the crucifixion of Jesus was a public event.

00:15:06:08 - 00:15:08:10
You know, the Gospels say many people saw this.

00:15:08:10 - 00:15:11:06
So, you know, he's another plausible candidate.

00:15:11:06 - 00:15:13:22
I don't even list him as one of my primary ones.

00:15:13:22 - 00:15:20:16
But clearly, Josephus knew lots of people, many of whom would have met Jesus

00:15:20:16 - 00:15:24:05
directly or even have been at the trial, like I think his commander was.

00:15:25:01 - 00:15:26:12
Yeah, well that's phenomenal.

00:15:26:12 - 00:15:30:08
You're probably one of the very few people on the planet who who actually keeps,

00:15:31:08 - 00:15:32:04
the Herodian

00:15:32:04 - 00:15:35:04
dynasty’s genealogical line in your head.

00:15:35:07 - 00:15:39:17
You know, most of us mortals, look it up, and, remind ourselves.

00:15:39:23 - 00:15:44:02
But, the I mean, one of the things that strikes me just listening to you here, is

00:15:44:02 - 00:15:46:23
of course these are just the people we know about. I mean, these are the,

00:15:46:23 - 00:15:51:06
given that the limited number of sources that we have for Judaism

00:15:53:01 - 00:15:55:12
of Jesus’s day, you've got the New Testament, you've got Josephus.

00:15:55:12 - 00:15:57:02
We've got later traditions.

00:15:57:02 - 00:15:59:02
We don't actually have a lot written about them.

00:15:59:02 - 00:16:03:20
But even amongst what we do, we're finding overlaps of

00:16:04:13 - 00:16:07:13
personnel that, in normal circumstances,

00:16:07:13 - 00:16:10:13
provided no one's ill, need to be

00:16:10:18 - 00:16:13:13
at the particular places at the right time.

00:16:13:13 - 00:16:17:02
And then there must be all the ones we haven't heard of who just, names

00:16:17:02 - 00:16:19:06
haven't survived in history. And that's that's remarkable.

00:16:20:09 - 00:16:21:21
I seem to remember you say something

00:16:21:21 - 00:16:26:13
about the phrase that Josephus uses

00:16:27:13 - 00:16:30:22
makes you think that his source of information is these people.

00:16:30:22 - 00:16:33:06
So you’ve got,

00:16:33:06 - 00:16:35:12
where,

00:16:35:12 - 00:16:38:12
in this translation, ‘When Pilate, upon hearing him

00:16:38:12 - 00:16:42:12
accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified . . .’

00:16:42:21 - 00:16:45:21
Something about that that makes you think he's saying

00:16:46:16 - 00:16:48:07
And I talked to them about them.

00:16:48:07 - 00:16:49:04
Is that right?

00:16:49:04 - 00:16:52:04
Well, I think it's more that's more of,

00:16:52:10 - 00:16:54:23
I think it's primarily that that language

00:16:54:23 - 00:16:58:05
is a marker of Josephus saying, I knew these people.

00:16:58:18 - 00:17:01:18
I, I think it's an inference that he may

00:17:01:18 - 00:17:04:18
have learned about Jesus from them.

00:17:05:20 - 00:17:08:21
And I think that's reasonable because he was he was quite

00:17:08:21 - 00:17:10:23
well connected with some of these folks.

00:17:10:23 - 00:17:14:22
And we know that his commander Ananus the second, you know,

00:17:15:03 - 00:17:18:01
the guy whose brother-in-law was Caiaphas and whose father was

00:17:18:01 - 00:17:21:09
Annas, that, he had dealings with Christians.

00:17:21:09 - 00:17:25:05
Josephus tells us that his commander had James,

00:17:25:05 - 00:17:28:05
the brother of Jesus, executed, stoned to death.

00:17:28:13 - 00:17:30:13
And so clearly Christians—

00:17:30:13 - 00:17:33:13
He, his commander, did not like Christians.

00:17:33:13 - 00:17:37:19
And and Josephus also tells us that because he had James the brother

00:17:37:19 - 00:17:42:21
of Jesus stoned to death, that, his commander lost the high priesthood.

00:17:42:21 - 00:17:46:02
So he he detested Christians so thoroughly that he was willing

00:17:46:02 - 00:17:50:13
to risk his own high priesthood to have James the brother of Jesus executed.

00:17:50:13 - 00:17:54:03
So what this tells me is that, this man, Ananus

00:17:54:03 - 00:17:57:03
the second is intimately familiar with Christianity.

00:17:57:08 - 00:17:59:02
His family clearly was.

00:17:59:02 - 00:18:03:16
He's willing to risk quite a bit in order to stop the spread of

00:18:03:16 - 00:18:08:02
of this Jesus movement and, that he publicly lost his priesthood,

00:18:08:02 - 00:18:11:15
which means Josephus would have known all about this in 62 AD

00:18:11:23 - 00:18:13:04
when this happened. So

00:18:13:04 - 00:18:17:02
I think it's a very reasonable inference that he learned about Jesus from

00:18:18:02 - 00:18:19:02
the enemies of

00:18:19:02 - 00:18:22:15
of Jesus, so to speak, that he learned about Jesus from Jesus's enemies.

00:18:22:20 - 00:18:25:15
But I don't think that's, you mentioned before,

00:18:25:15 - 00:18:29:17
you know, there's any number of people, the peasants in Galilee, you know, random

00:18:29:17 - 00:18:33:13
citizens of Jerusalem he would have encountered, you know,

00:18:35:03 - 00:18:39:04
there's there's any number of people, some of whom may have been hostile

00:18:39:04 - 00:18:42:12
to Jesus, some of whom may have been sympathetic, others may have liked him.

00:18:42:12 - 00:18:44:14
I mean, it just, there could have been everything in between.

00:18:44:14 - 00:18:47:20
So, in other words, I think he had about as best information

00:18:47:20 - 00:18:51:23
as you could possibly hope for, to learn about Jesus.

00:18:52:23 - 00:18:55:22
And one of the things we did in the last episode was look at,

00:18:55:22 - 00:18:59:14
his particular phraseology and how it comes from Josephus,

00:19:00:00 - 00:19:04:21
as in the Josephus writing here, the 89 or 90 words in this passage,

00:19:05:20 - 00:19:07:04
have marks of his style.

00:19:07:04 - 00:19:12:03
So we talked about this phrase, par’ hēmin which is, for the Greek

00:19:12:03 - 00:19:17:04
geeks out there, par’, a preposition plus hēmeis, meaning us in the dative case,

00:19:18:00 - 00:19:21:05
which, is a particularly common phrase.

00:19:21:05 - 00:19:24:01
Would you say a phrase like that

00:19:24:01 - 00:19:27:05
is obviously it is used in other Greek writers,

00:19:27:05 - 00:19:31:04
but it's a particular thing that, alongside other evidences,

00:19:31:17 - 00:19:35:12
just suggests the whole tenor of this is his style.

00:19:36:18 - 00:19:37:20
Absolutely.

00:19:37:20 - 00:19:39:08
He he likes that phrase.

00:19:39:08 - 00:19:41:23
He uses it fifty-something times.

00:19:41:23 - 00:19:46:05
And you have to remember that Josephus delights in diversity.

00:19:46:05 - 00:19:46:19
He doesn't . . .

00:19:46:19 - 00:19:48:21
He likes having strange phrases.

00:19:48:21 - 00:19:50:16
He likes doing unique things.

00:19:50:16 - 00:19:53:13
I think at one point, I counted there's

00:19:53:13 - 00:19:56:13
a there's a Greek particle, you know, eti or something,

00:19:56:14 - 00:19:59:09
or nun, where he has that in,

00:19:59:09 - 00:20:03:04
like eighteen totally uniquely different phrases.

00:20:03:04 - 00:20:07:02
So he doesn't particularly enjoy using phrases repeatedly.

00:20:07:02 - 00:20:08:05
But this one he does.

00:20:08:05 - 00:20:11:05
And when you look at how he uses it,

00:20:11:09 - 00:20:14:01
he always uses it,

00:20:14:01 - 00:20:17:00
in, in ways to indicate direct familiarity.

00:20:17:00 - 00:20:20:19
So it not only matches his style, it also highlights the fact that he was

00:20:20:19 - 00:20:24:04
closely connected with the ‘first men’, the prōtoi who accused Jesus.

00:20:24:13 - 00:20:29:04
And when you then put together the phrase ‘the first men amongst

00:20:29:04 - 00:20:33:05
us’, it's, those are both Josephan phrases in their own right.

00:20:33:05 - 00:20:36:02
And then together a sort of super-Josephan phrase. Is that fair?

00:20:36:02 - 00:20:37:20
Yeah, precisely.

00:20:37:20 - 00:20:41:14
So, so so it becomes really hard

00:20:41:14 - 00:20:45:17
to imagine any scribe

00:20:46:16 - 00:20:48:03
so knowing the

00:20:48:03 - 00:20:51:10
style of Josephus, that they get this right, as in you would almost

00:20:51:14 - 00:20:54:20
need to have read Josephus lots and lots of times

00:20:55:04 - 00:20:59:09
to get his phraseology and, and basically back then

00:20:59:13 - 00:21:03:03
where there are people who forge stuff, they're never that good

00:21:03:08 - 00:21:07:01
at forging that sort of particularity of phrase.

00:21:07:01 - 00:21:12:03
So, so to do that across a passage, it just isn't plausible.

00:21:12:16 - 00:21:14:03
I completely agree.

00:21:14:03 - 00:21:17:19
I, in fact, there's some scholars that have claimed that

00:21:18:01 - 00:21:22:09
that phrase is a marker of inauthenticity because Josephus didn't use those phrases.

00:21:22:09 - 00:21:25:14
But of course, once we got Greek databases where we could just do

00:21:25:14 - 00:21:28:14
a quick search, we realised that actually he uses it all the time.

00:21:28:15 - 00:21:30:16
And so one of the arguments of authenticity

00:21:30:16 - 00:21:34:09
is that many of these parallel scholars, never, despite

00:21:34:16 - 00:21:38:05
editing Josephus, translating it, reading him many, many times.

00:21:38:05 - 00:21:40:08
They never noticed these parallels.

00:21:40:08 - 00:21:43:13
It took computer databases to reveal these things,

00:21:43:18 - 00:21:46:19
which suggests that Christian scribes would

00:21:46:19 - 00:21:50:13
have no ability to replicate this kind of, this kind of language.

00:21:50:13 - 00:21:53:09
It really can only come from Josephus.

00:21:53:09 - 00:21:57:08
And and this is what the field of forensic authorship analysis tells us.

00:21:57:08 - 00:22:00:08
It tells us that everybody has this unique idiolect

00:22:00:10 - 00:22:02:18
and that provided you have enough information,

00:22:02:18 - 00:22:05:22
you can kind of figure out what someone's style is.

00:22:06:06 - 00:22:11:01
And here we have the thumbprint of Josephus all over the passage about Jesus.

00:22:11:11 - 00:22:11:15
Yeah.

00:22:11:15 - 00:22:14:22
So idiolect, for those who haven't come across the term before, it's one of those

00:22:14:22 - 00:22:18:21
wonderful scholarly terms for your own way of talking and writing.

00:22:18:21 - 00:22:22:13
And that's, you know, like you got a dialect, that's for a group.

00:22:22:13 - 00:22:23:13
And you have one.

00:22:23:13 - 00:22:26:04
You have any idiolect. You may not know it, but you do.

00:22:26:04 - 00:22:26:22
So, yeah.

00:22:28:04 - 00:22:30:10
So bringing this together,

00:22:30:10 - 00:22:34:01
as we've been looking at these two episodes at your, your work.

00:22:34:01 - 00:22:39:00
Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ.

00:22:40:00 - 00:22:44:08
People can get that, from your website, Josephusandjesus.com.

00:22:45:01 - 00:22:47:22
They can get it from,

00:22:47:22 - 00:22:50:19
Oxford University Press.

00:22:50:19 - 00:22:54:02
Can you sort of put together what significance

00:22:54:02 - 00:22:58:09
you think this has for people who are looking into Christianity,

00:22:58:23 - 00:23:02:08
today or people who are Christians, what what it means for a wider culture,

00:23:02:09 - 00:23:05:08
because obviously it's it's a place where there's

00:23:05:08 - 00:23:08:20
a lot of scholarly detail in there, but there's also a wider conversation,

00:23:09:08 - 00:23:09:21
that's going on.

00:23:09:21 - 00:23:12:01
And maybe you can address, that.

00:23:12:01 - 00:23:15:13
What what would you, you would say to, people today

00:23:15:13 - 00:23:20:09
P: who are looking into, these sort of  things T: You know, first and foremost,

00:23:21:21 - 00:23:23:20
this is just another witness

00:23:23:20 - 00:23:28:08
to the most amazing human who ever walked the earth, which is special in of itself.

00:23:28:08 - 00:23:31:04
But the particular things that it adds

00:23:31:04 - 00:23:34:15
is that when you look at historical Jesus theories,

00:23:35:03 - 00:23:36:01
secular scholars,

00:23:36:01 - 00:23:39:21
they try very hard to figure out, you know, how did the reports of Jesus's

00:23:39:21 - 00:23:43:02
miracles, how did the reports of his resurrection develop?

00:23:43:20 - 00:23:45:20
And they they theorise that, you know,

00:23:45:20 - 00:23:48:20
the disciples were were lying or that the disciples,

00:23:49:15 - 00:23:53:12
slowly over the generations, these these claims were exaggerated,

00:23:54:06 - 00:23:58:13
so that, Jesus went from being originally just a humble country preacher

00:23:58:13 - 00:24:03:07
to this wonder worker, this miracle worker in later Christian generations.

00:24:03:16 - 00:24:08:17
But what this book does is, I think it shows that those theories don't stand,

00:24:08:18 - 00:24:13:20
that Josephus says that Jesus worked miracles.

00:24:14:07 - 00:24:16:07
He's suspicious about their origin.

00:24:16:07 - 00:24:19:16
You know, he's worried about whether they're coming from from from,

00:24:19:20 - 00:24:22:21
you know, negative supernatural power, demonic power or something like that.

00:24:23:07 - 00:24:25:16
But, he, he does think he did,

00:24:25:16 - 00:24:29:14
he worked miracles, and he affirms that the disciples

00:24:29:14 - 00:24:34:19
did believe on the third day that Jesus had risen from the dead.

00:24:35:04 - 00:24:39:13
And, that that tells us that Josephus didn't view

00:24:39:19 - 00:24:44:17
the narrative of Jesus's resurrection as some kind of later artefact

00:24:44:17 - 00:24:47:21
that developed after a long game of telephone or something like that.

00:24:48:13 - 00:24:51:20
Josephus has, every ability to criticise

00:24:51:20 - 00:24:54:20
the supernatural, you know, he laughs at magical stories.

00:24:55:05 - 00:24:57:16
He he he exposes impostors.

00:24:57:16 - 00:24:58:18
He has no problem

00:24:58:18 - 00:25:02:20
talking about and criticising people who are faking things or lying.

00:25:03:04 - 00:25:06:15
But with Jesus, he says, you know, the disciples

00:25:06:15 - 00:25:09:21
believed this, that this happened on the third day.

00:25:09:21 - 00:25:13:00
And so I think it it forces the conversation

00:25:13:00 - 00:25:18:01
to what happened on the third day after Jesus died.

00:25:18:16 - 00:25:22:13
The disciples came away saying he was raised to life again,

00:25:22:19 - 00:25:25:18
and they were willing to lay their lives down for that belief.

00:25:27:00 - 00:25:29:12
And Josephus witnesses to that, too.

00:25:29:12 - 00:25:32:23
He mentions the brother of Jesus being stoned

00:25:32:23 - 00:25:35:23
to death, ostensibly for being a Christian.

00:25:36:01 - 00:25:37:14
So Josephus also witnesses

00:25:37:14 - 00:25:40:14
to their their persistence despite persecution in this belief.

00:25:41:19 - 00:25:44:08
Well, that's a wonderful place to end, Tom.

00:25:44:08 - 00:25:47:01
We’re so glad for you spending time with us, and thank you for writing

00:25:47:01 - 00:25:50:04
this Oxford University Press book, Josephus and Jesus:

00:25:50:16 - 00:25:53:19
New evidence for the One Called Christ, which you can get online.

00:25:53:19 - 00:25:56:14
And, thank you for joining us on the Tyndale House podcast.

00:25:56:14 - 00:25:58:20
Thank you to everyone for listening.

00:25:58:20 - 00:26:00:16
Please do rate and review.

00:26:00:16 - 00:26:03:04
And, thank you very much, Tom, for joining us.

00:26:03:04 - 00:26:04:20
And, God bless you all.