Tom Schmidt: How well connected were Josephus and Jesus?

In this 'Meet the Scholar' episode, Dr Thomas Schmidt, author of the book, Josephus and Jesus, talks to Dr Tony Watkins about the many connections Josephus had to various members of the 1st century Jewish-elite who were likely to have been at Jesus's trial.

Dr Thomas Schmidt is Associate Professor at Fairfield University and a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University. He is the author of Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ (Oxford University Press).

Transcript

Tony: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Tyndale House podcast. This is one of our Meet the Scholar series, in which we talk to scholars who have some connection with Tyndale House. And I’m talking today to Tom Schmidt, who we have talked to before. Previously, Peter has interviewed Tom twice for the podcast, talking about Tom’s book, Jesus and Josephus, and those were very interesting. Lots of you have listened to those, and we’ve had some very positive comments about those. If you haven’t seen them yet, check them out. There will be some overlap in this conversation, but we wanted to talk to Tom again about Josephus and his world and the world in which Jesus was put on trial and executed at that first Easter.

But first, let’s find out who Tom is and a little bit more about him. So, hi, Tom. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Tom: Tony, it’s a great pleasure to be with you here again. Thank you very much. Tony, it’s a great pleasure to be with you here again. Thank you very much. 

Tony: Perhaps you could just start by telling us who you are and what you do and what your particular research interests are.

Tom: I’m a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity and a bit of Eastern Christianity also. I have a book, of course, Josephus and Jesus that came out recently, But I also do work on early Christian texts, translations, and some Syriac and Arabic literature as well, but done by Christians. I have my PhD from Yale.

Right now, I’m a visiting fellow at Princeton University, and I’m an associate professor at Fairfield University. 

Tony: Great. So tell us more about the world that Josephus is describing. I mean, some people won’t even know who Josephus is really. They’ll have heard his name. They’ll have some idea of the fact that he was a Jewish writer in the first century. Could you fill in some of the story about Josephus and why his book is so significant? 

Tom: Josephus, I think fairly we could say, is the most valuable source we have on the culture and background of New Testament times, that is, of first century Galilee and Jerusalem and Judea. And this is because this is where Josephus was raised.

He was born in Jerusalem in 37 raised. He was born in Jerusalem in 37 AD. He was born to an eminent priestly family. He was raised in Jerusalem, raised to be a priest. He also became a Pharisee when he was 19 years old. And he had this fabulous career. We wish we knew more, but he was an ambassador. He was, as I mentioned, a Pharisee. He was a priest. He also became a general in the Jewish war. And then after the defeat of the Jews at the hands of the Romans, he devoted the remaining decades of his life to writing histories of the Jewish people. And he wrote from the very beginning, you know, starting with creation all the way up to his present day.

Most of his works, though, one of his main works, The War of the Jews, focuses on that war of the Jews with the Romans from 66 to 70 AD. But he also has an autobiography where he tells us much of the information I just relayed to you about Josephus’ background. 

And then in another work of his, the Antiquities, which is his largest work, it’s a whole history, a monumental history of the Jewish people up to about 66 AD. And that text is where we get so much information about New Testament people and about New Testament customs, the background, the happenings, geographic locations, pretty much everything. You name it, Josephus will help inform us about especially the gospel background. And like I said, this is coming from a man, Josephus, who lived in Jerusalem in the 30s, 40s, and 50s AD. He knew some of the people mentioned in the New Testament. So he is a profoundly good source for historians to use to understand the New Testament. 

Tony: And is he a reliable source? to understand the New Testament. And is he a reliable source? 

Tom: Yes, he is. He is a very reliable source. He’s not perfect. We know he’s not perfect because he will describe the same series of events in multiple books and he will put them in different order or he’ll contradict himself. So, you know, he’s not infallible. We know that. But as far as ancient historians go, he’s very good. In fact, you know, he’s up there as among the best as far as ancient historians go. So he is reliable. As I said, that doesn’t mean he gets everything correct, but he is reliable. 

Tony: And how does what Josephus is writing about mesh with what the Gospels are writing about? Are they fully consistent with each other? Do they shed light on each other? What are the connections between them? They do shed a lot of light on one another.

Tom: It’s not just Josephus shedding light on the Gospels. It’s also the Gospels shedding some light on Josephus. That happens as well. They are writing on similar themes. They’re writing about the same time period, the same people, the Jewish people. But of course, the Gospels are laser focused on Jesus. Everything revolves around Jesus. And things are only mentioned because they happen to do with Jesus. This is the nature of writing a biography. You focus on the subject. Josephus, though, is writing about the Jewish people. So he mentions hundreds, thousands of names of individuals. What he’s trying to do is not just document what happened. He’s also trying to defend Judaism before the Romans.

The Jews have suffered this catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Romans. There’s a lot of very bad stereotypes that the Romans and the Greeks have against Jews. Josephus, I think, is looking at his beloved Jewish people and Jewish culture and understanding that this people and culture may cease to exist unless I try and preserve it and promote it. So when he’s writing his history, he’s attempting to make Judaism intelligible, but also sympathetic to the Romans. And what that means is that, you know, he’ll shy away from things that might make Jews look bad a little bit. He won’t want to really dwell on it very much. So they do shed much light on each other, but they’re writing with different purposes. other but they’re writing with different purposes as far as their how they connect Josephus mentions so many of the people that are described in the New Testament he talks about Herod Agrippa the first Herod Agrippa, the second Herod the Great, Herodias who asked for the head of John the Baptist. He talks about John the Baptist he talks about James the brother of Jesus, people like Drusilla and Felix and Festus and Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas and Annas, the high priest. These are all people that Josephus describes. And sometimes he mentions them in passing. Sometimes he’ll give a paragraph or two about them, but he does describe them and he places them in the exact same context that the New Testament has these people. 

So that all lines up. And, you know, aside from people, he also will give very helpful background information. For example, Josephus is very clear that the issue of taxation was a very grave and serious issue to early first century Jews in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. And this sheds light on why the Jewish leadership in the Gospels is asking Jesus about taxation. Why are they giving him this gotcha question, this loaded question? And it’s because this was the hot potato of the day. It was a serious issue that the common people and the elite were worried about. This comes up, things like this happen again and again in the New Testament.

Another example, you know, Luke has this line in Acts where he seems to suggest that the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection, but the Pharisees do. Well, Josephus talks about that at some length. He mentions the differences between the Sadducees and the Pharisees and and you know we could go on for for hours about how these these texts complement one another. I’ll give one more example: Josephus speaks about Pontius Pilate and he paints Pontius Pilate as a ruthless but fairly pragmatic leader. So he would not hesitate to do some cruel things, but he also knew when he was a beaten man and would decide to relent on occasion. In the trial of Jesus, where Pontius Pilate seems to realize that Jesus is harmless and doesn’t really think he deserves to be executed and tries to rescue him, but when he realizes it’s not going to work, he just throws his hands up and says, okay, do what you will. This sounds very much like the kind of Pilate that Josephus describes. 

Tony: Yes, that’s very interesting. I’ve heard people say that the depiction of Pilate in the Gospels is implausible for that very reason, that there is no way that a Roman governed in Jerusalem would have allowed any prisoner to go free in the way that he’s described letting Barabbas go free and asking the people who do they want. But you’re saying from Josephus that that’s entirely plausible. 

Tom: Yeah, I think the portrayal of Pontius Pilate as this cruel yet pragmatic individual lines up with the gospel portrayal. As far as releasing prisoners, I should have checked this if I’d known this was going to come up. I’m just plumbing the depths of my memory, but I seem to recall that Philo of Alexandria, Philo is another Hellenistic Jewish writer. He’s writing in the 50s. I seem to recall him mentioning an Egyptian governor or some Roman governor in a province releasing a prisoner on someone’s birthday as a celebration or some festal day, which seems to line up with what the Gospels say. But I’d have to double check that. 

Tony: We won’t hold you to it! This conversation is just between us…

Stepping back a moment, just thinking about what Josephus is saying about Pilate. You said that Josephus is defending the Jews and Judaism for the Romans in some ways. It’s presenting them their history for the Romans. Why is Josephus doing that? 

Tom: Hmm. I think there are multiple reasons and some we may not fully understand. Clearly there was a patron. I think his name was Epaphroditus who wanted Josephus to write these works. Obviously then Josephus is going to be, you know, his motives are going to be attenuated by what Epaphroditus would like. So that’s one reason. But it’s very clear that Josephus wants the Jewish people to come off well in the eyes of the Romans. 

Tony: Maybe it’s worth just very briefly explaining how this guy who had been a general in the Jewish army in the revolt against the Romans, how he comes to be in Rome and knowing the emperor and being patronized by Epaphroditus and others. 

Tom: It’s a remarkable story. Josephus tells us this himself in his own words. He’s a general, he’s stationed in Galilee, and in Galilee he visits all these places that Jesus and the apostles would have preached and traveled by. And it’s clear that the Romans are going to win this war. They have overwhelming numbers. And so Josephus at some point is captured by the Romans. And, you know, this is not a good position to be in. He’s a general, one of seven generals. So he’s one of the chief leaders. In fact, there’s two supreme commanders. But at some point, it feels like there’s then only one supreme commander, Annas the second or Annanas the second, and then there’s seven generals and Josephus is one of them. So he’s a top top man. 

But he’s brought before Titus, who is the son of the newly crowned emperor Vespasian. And he is brought before Titus, who’s the general leading the Romans. And he gains Titus’s favour. He describes this prophetic experience that Josephus claims to have had, where he goes into this prophetic ecstasy and foresees that that that Titus will become emperor and and he serves as translator. This does make sense, you know. I mean, if you are in a war and you capture one of the generals who’s highly educated and happens to speak your language and he’s willing to work with you you might work with him and Josephus was. And so he … there are people who accuse Josephus of betraying the Jewish people. Josephus portrays himself as trying desperately to save the Jewish temple and to save as many Jewish people as possible. And I think one could also say sympathetically that he’s sort of like the prophet Jeremiah, he knows that the Babylonians are coming and there’s nothing that can be done about it. And he’s just acknowledging reality. 

In any case, after the Jewish defeat, Josephus is rewarded. He’s given some land, he’s clearly given, he’s given some other things as well. He ends up in Rome where clearly he seems to have either been given a very large amount of money or was given some sort of stipend so that he could live out his days as sort of a lesser nobleman in Rome. And that’s what he does. He’s writing for multiple audiences, but a big one are these elite Romans. Josephus is living in Rome when he’s writing these books. He’s circling amongst the highest of the high. You know, he knows the emperors, multiple emperors. He’s met with them in some sense. They are his patrons, not of this specific work, but of himself.

They’ve sort of rescued him and plucked him from this war. But he also has connections with the Herodians. The Herodians are the last Jewish kings, the last Jewish royal family. And he still has connections with them. He explains that he showed his books of history to them. He sent 62 letters. He exchanged 62 letters with Herod Agrippa II, the last king of the Jews. Herod Agrippa II is mentioned in the Book of Acts. He attends a trial of the apostle Paul. Josephus knows him directly so obviously he also wants the Herodians to read these works as well as the Roman elite, the Gentile Roman elite, including the emperor and other people.

And there’s other connections you could draw as well. You know, Tacitus is a very famous Roman historian. He’s a, you know, a junior contemporary of Josephus. And when Tacitus was a young man, he was in very similar circles. It’s not impossible that Josephus and Tacitus knew each other. So there’s historians he might be dialoguing with. But I think, you know, a major, major reason also is that Josephus just, he wants, he wants Judaism to flourish. He wants the Jewish people to grow and recover. He’s dedicated his life to them. He was an ambassador for them. He was a priest and, and he was a general on their behalf. And now he’s serving them as a historian. 

I say all that though, and I want to also point out, I heard this from Steve Mason, who’s one of the greatest Josephan authorities, that though Josephus does have these hopes, these agendas in his history, they don’t seem, in my opinion, they don’t seem to overwhelm his historical veracity. So, for instance, he will, even though he knows the Herodians, he tells many stories that do not make the Herodians look very good. And even though he knows the emperor, he tells stories that doesn’t make the emperor look good. And likewise, he obviously wants to promote Judaism, but he has story after story after story that do not make Jews look good. And you would think if he was simply writing propaganda, that those things would not be there. But they are there. And so I think that adds to his credibility. But you can still tell that when particularly sensitive issues come up, he will kind of wring his hands a little bit or he’ll spend less time on it and move on. 

Tony: So you’ve talked about Pilate a little bit. What else does Josephus tell us that helps us to understand what’s going on in the Easter narratives in the, say, the last week of Jesus’ life, when he finally goes to Jerusalem for that last time? What information does Josephus give us that helps us to understand that better? 

Tom: First, just by way of general background, Josephus is very clear that Passover was this huge feast for the Jewish people and that thousands, tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims from all over Judea and Galilee and indeed outside of those areas would stream to Jerusalem. So Jerusalem was just filled to bursting on the Passover according to Josephus. This of course course, lines up with what the Gospels say about Jesus going to Jerusalem on Passover. There seems to be many, many people that are there on Passover also. And remember that the Jewish priests are interested in killing Jesus, but they say, ooh, not on the Passover because the crowds might revolt. So the priesthood is worried about these crowds. They know they kind of like Jesus. And Josephus corroborates the idea that there’s all these crowds there on Passover and so forth. But there’s other specific things that Josephus tells us also. He tells us more about the Passover. He talks about, you know, there would be large groups of people who would eat the Passover lamb. And that aligns with what we see happening at the Last Supper with Jesus. 

Josephus also talks about aspects, he hints at aspects of the trial of Jesus, where he mentions it was the first men among us, in Josephus’ words, the first men among us who accused Jesus before Pontius Pilate. And that’s effectively what the Gospels portray. They describe the Jewish leadership as bringing Jesus before Pontius Pilate and accusing him before Pilate. And Josephus tells us there’s some statements that he makes about how that suggests that the ability to execute criminals was taken away from the Jewish people by the Romans. criminals was taken away from the Jewish people by the Romans.

And that again explains what’s going on in the gospel narratives, why the Jewish leadership can’t simply do to Jesus what they will. So there’s many parallels. There’s also other parallels in other Jewish literature like the Mishnah and the Talmud. And these help explain the trial of Jesus and how that trial took place. Oftentimes you hear scholars say that the trial of Jesus does not make a good historical sense. It seems implausible. But I think when you read these other Jewish documents, they line up with what the Sanhedrin would be expected to do. 

Tony: What does Josephus tell us about some of the characters who are involved in the trial? 

Tom: We’ve mentioned Pontius Pilate already. What’s interesting, this did not make it into my book. I hope if I have a second edition, I can include it. What’s interesting is that when Josephus talks about Jesus, he places his discussion of Jesus within four or five other stories that take place during the reign of the governorship of Pontius Pilate. And the first two stories are of a Jewish Pontius Pilate doing something and, and the, the, the Jews coming to Pontius Pilate to appeal to him regarding some sort of decision that they want him to make. And in one of these, Pilate does not make the decision that the Jewish leadership is looking for. In the other case, Pilate relents and he does. And that’s interesting because we see a very similar pattern in the Gospels. So Josephus tells these two stories about Pilate being appealed to by the Jewish leadership or the Jewish masses. And in one case, he agrees. In the other case, he doesn’t agree. 

And then he tells the story of Jesus, where again tells those two stories elsewhere. So it’s one of those instances where he tells the same story twice. And in those other stories, he says that Pilate sat on his judgment seat, his bema. And that is fascinating because in the Gospels, what is Pilate doing? He’s sitting on his judgment seat as the Jewish people are coming to him. And so it feels like, now Josephus does not mention Pilate on his judgment seat during his discussion of Jesus. But what’s interesting is he has placed this story as the third story of three Pontius Pilate stories of Jews coming to Pilate to appeal to him while he’s on his judgment seat. So that again is, I think, a very interesting corroboration of not only what Pontius Pilate would do when the Jewish people would come to him or Jewish leadership. 

But also, Josephus seems to think it makes good sense to have the Jesus story and Pontius Pilate judging, you know, in that same context. So that’s one of the nuggets that we get from this, other things that we can derive from Josephus are aspects of other Jewish leaders like Herod the Tetrarch, Herod Antipas the Tetrarch. Josephus describes him and his reign. He’s over in Galilee, But of course, where would he be on Passover? He would be in Jerusalem, celebrating Passover. It would be required of him to be there. And if we read the Gospel of Luke, Luke says that in those days, Herod was in Jerusalem. Jerusalem. And that seems puzzling, but when you realize this is happening on Passover, it makes complete sense that this is of course where Herod the Tetrarch would be. And Josephus corroborates this by, by mentioning how Jews came to Jerusalem on Passover. So we know this was consistent.

Other, other things that Josephus mentions are curiously, if you read the Gospel of John, there are some statements that the Gospel of John makes that come off as if Jesus was not actually arrested on the night of Passover, but instead arrested the night before Passover. And that’s because John seems to think of Passover as occurring the next day. He describes Passover as happening then. Josephus helps us to understand what’s going on here. You know, scholars have many different ideas. Is John contradictory? Maybe John is right and the Synoptic Gospels are wrong or vice versa. Perhaps John is theologically moving things around a little bit. 

But Josephus, I think, presents an interesting solution. And that’s because Josephus, as well as many other testimonies from ancient Jewish literature, agree with this. from ancient Jewish literature agree with this, that by Josephus’ day in the first century, the Passover was not thought of as one day. It was thought of as seven days. The Feast of Unleavened Bread, which continued directly afterwards, was simply called the Passover. And Josephus and others will even make explicit statements that the Passover is for seven days. And so that helps to make sense of the Gospel of John, because I argue in my book that I think this is what’s going on here, is that John, being raised in and around Jerusalem and Galilee, knows this. And this just goes without saying that Passover is a seven-day feast. And of course, the really big day is the first day where you have the Passover lamb, but you have other Passover sacrifices and other things as the week continues. I think John is aware of this, so he speaks that way. And Josephus, I think, corroborates this as well. 

Tony: Right. So does, going back to Herod, does the gospel account that, that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod and then Herod sent him back again during, during that night, does that make sense then from what Josephus tells us?

Tom: I think we have to judge based on the character of the individuals involved. And I’ve already mentioned that from Josephus, Pontius Pilate comes across as, as sort of a cruel pragmatist. So he’s very willing to get his hands dirty, but only when he needs to. And if he doesn’t need to, then why, why do it? And I think that makes sense of what’s going on is, you know, Pontius Pilate’s been woken up early in the morning to see to this emergency case of this guy, Jesus, whom he’s heard rumours about, and he thinks he’s harmless and Pilate is probably, you know, doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, and then he hears that he’s from Galilee, and Herod the Tetrarch is in town, and he thinks, great, I’ll get rid of this problem by sending him over to Herod.

Remember that on the one hand, by ancient standards, the Romans were very much driven by meticulous laws. They had all these laws and policies of how things were to happen. But that’s only relative to the ancient world. Relative to the modern world, you know, we would not think that the Romans had particularly carefully written laws that they always obeyed. Romans had particularly a careful, carefully written laws that they always obeyed. And what that means is that, you know, much of, of Roman judgments and things are going to be very casuistic. They’re just going to be attenuated to the circumstances at hand. And, you know, the number one thing that Pontius Pilate needs to do is make sure there’s not a Jewish rebellion. That is his number one goal as governor. And so whatever he needs to do, um, he can do. And, you know, he would like nothing more than to get this Jesus guy off his hands. So he doesn’t have to make a risky call because he knows that executing Jesus might cause a rebellion, but not executing Jesus might cause a rebellion. So he would rather just not make that, that decision.

But I would just underscore, um, this all comes from how Josephus paints the character of Pontius Pilate, and what how he handles situations. We could say a similar thing about Herod the Great. Josephus does not talk about the slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem like Matthew does, but what he does talk about is Herod being very willing to slaughter even his own children in order to preserve his rule. So so killing you know a dozen young boys in Bethlehem is is not remotely the worst thing that that Herod did. Josephus also mentions that when Herod was about to die, that he ordered that that jewish leaders be rounded up and slaughtered at his death so that some people would mourn when he died. That’s the kind of man he was. So again, that aligns very well with how Matthew describes Herod being so bloodthirsty. 

Tony: Yeah, sure. Just very briefly, as we come to a close, what does Josephus say about the Jewish leaders that are around during the trial? I know you talked to Pete about that in the other interview, but perhaps you could just give us a quick overview of that. 

Tom: He mentions a lot of names. First and foremost, Pontius Pilate, he’s not one of the Jewish leaders, but he is a prominent Jewish leader, but he talks about Caiaphas, the high priest. He also talks about Annanas I or Annas. And what’s interesting is that Luke and John mention that Caiaphas and Annas were both the high priest, which appears contradictory. There’s only supposed to be one high priest. And here we have Luke and John talking about two high priests, which seems totally discordant with what would have been happening. Josephus, however, solves this because he talks about Annas and Caiaphas in the exact same way. That Annas was the high priest from about 6, if I’m getting my dates right, 6 AD to 15 AD. And then his son became high priest, and then his son-in-law, Caiaphas, became high priest. And then he had three or so more sons become high priest. And this entire time, he is sort of high priest emeritus. And Josephus will still call him high priest. He’ll still treat him as the high priest as kind of the power behind the throne and this seems to be exactly what Luke and John are doing so that all makes a whole lot of sense. Josephus also mentions the head of the Sanhedrin. He talks about Rabbi Gamaliel, who he says was a Pharisee. And we learn from the Mishnah and the Talmud that Gamaliel was head of the Sanhedrin. And probably around 30 AD, right when the Sanhedrin put Jesus on trial. And this corroborates what’s going on in the New Testament, where in the book of Acts, Luke describes Gamaliel as a Pharisee and a leader or even the leader of the Sanhedrin. And all of that matches Josephus perfectly. Same name, same time, same place, same role, etc. 

So Josephus also corroborates, you know, when Luke mentions in one of these early chapters, chapters five or six, how the apostles were on trial before the family of the high priests. And he mentioned some names and people who are in the lineage of the high priest. And this matches Josephus, who describes this high priestly dynasty, this family, the family of Ananus, where we have Ananus and then his son-in-law Caiaphas, and then four or five other sons who also become high priest. It’s the most powerful family in Judea. So Luke corroborates that as well. 

Tom: Brilliant. There’s so much we could talk about, we could carry on for a very long time. But I’m mindful of your time. That’s a great overview of what Josephus helps us to understand better in the Gospels and the Eastern narratives in particular. So thank you very much, Tom.

And if you haven’t yet watched the other interviews with Tom Schmidt, with Peter Williams chatting to him about specific issues in Tom’s book, Jesus and Josephus, do check those out. We’ll link to those in the show notes. Thank you very much for joining us. Do rate and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. If you’re on YouTube, please click the bell to be notified when new episodes are released. And join us again for more Meet the Scholar interviews. Thank you very much. Bye bye.