Outside of the Sacred texts, a unique testimony of Jesus existence written in 91AD
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You understand many biblical scholars consider the Josephus references to Jesus to be a forgery by Eusebius?
The majority believe the paragraph is original with a bit of interpolation. I was challenged by an unbeliever (who has asked me not to ping him) to read one of those very few scholars who consider the whole thing a forgery. I went into it believing Josephus made 1.5 references to Jesus; the so-called scholar wants to teach that Josephus made 0 references to him; but I came away believing that Josephus actually makes 4.5 references to Jesus!
The primary reasons people cast a shade on this passage are (1) they didn't understand Josephus's neutral language, such as saying he was the Christ and separately he was called the Christ, was not regarded as the hard boundary line we regard it as now; (2) they think that Origen's unhelpful dismissal of Josephus indicates that Josephus said something different than every manuscript of him says; (3) they then invented rationalizations to wrest this passage out of Josephus, contrary to how they treat every other paragraph in him as genuine and source-based; (4) they argued from silence in many ways by laying false expectations on how people should have handled this passage the first thousand years.
Once I realized that it had been demonstrated that Josephus's primary source was Luke 24 and then independently statistically verified this year, I recognized that both direct references to Jesus were genuine (I listed 29 textual reasons) and every word can be defended as being from Josephus by comparison to his corpus and his paraphrasis. (Along the way I found that Josephus's half-reference to the myriad tumults in Herod's time, and his two references to Herod's kin plotting against a king of their own race, were in fact best fit to no person other than Jesus and the slaughter of the innocents.) So I thank God for atheists whose arguments are so lame that they renew and strengthen my faith in God.
u/BoiledRhombus
Others have analyzed the passage and found it to be inauthentic. It is written as if it were centuries later.
https://vridar.org/2015/01/16/fresh-evidence-the-jesus-passage-in-josephus-a-forgery/
Abstract of paper by Paul Hopper:
Josephus in the Jewish Antiquities introduces Jesus the Messiah into his history of the Jews, and appears to report events corresponding closely to those of the Gospels, including Jesusβs crucifixion on the orders of Pontius Pilate. A longstanding dispute exists about the authenticity of this text. The present article offers a narratological analysis of the passage, comparing the styles of event reporting in the passage with the three other episodes in Josephusβs Pontius Pilate sequence. The study concludes that the uses of the Greek verb forms such as aorists and participles are distinct in the Jesus passage from those in the other Pilate episodes, and that these differences amount to a difference in genre. It is suggested that the Jesus passage is close in style and content to the creeds that were composed two to three centuries after Josephus.
If you looked at my article, you'd see that I demonstrated that Hopper was the outlier who disagreed with everyone before, and everyone after. IMHO Hopper's work was completely debunked by Goldberg 2022 and Schmidt 2025. The reason for Hopper's observations was that Josephus, who usually paraphrased from traditional Jewish or Roman sources, paraphrased the testimony from Luke 24 instead, which had the apologetics cast to it that Hopper observes, even though a comparison shows that Josephus was deliberately softening Luke's language.
Since scholars agree that 1 Cor. 15:3-4 represents an oral creed composed 2-5 years after the crucifixion, there was plenty of apologetics genre floating around before Josephus so that we don't have to relegate it to 300 years later. Schmidt 2025 shows that all the language of the testimony is specifically and statistically Josephan, and even Louis Feldman, who rejects the passage, only finds three phrases that he can rank as definitely not Josephan, but his methodology is suspect ("wonders" and "tribe" are common enough in variation and "still to this day" is very generic).
Scholars who express doubt about the authenticity or reliability of specific passages in Josephus's writings, particularly his mentions of Jesus (known as the Testimonium Flavianum and the reference to James), include:
Many biblical scholars get a bunch of stuff as wrong as rain. Biblical scolars have the same problem as all scholars. They only eat what the endorsers of truth tell them to eat. Want to learn. Study for your self. Apply the principles of how the bible interprets itself. Then you can stop guessing.
I have studied a fair bit over the years I guess. I have never found anything to make me think it is anything but an invented control system. They were able to achieve destruction of traditional belief systems from all over Europe in favor of the jew-deifying religion. You literally worship jewishness. How could anyone think it is real? It's truly mind-boggling to think you still believe like your life depended on it all this time after it was foisted on your ancestors.
So you're saying the religion that called the Jewish leaders a brood of vipers and the children of the Devil is somehow worshipping Jews? That's pretty crazy. The whole New Testament completely disagrees. Not to mention that Christians were dying at the hands of the Jews simply for believing it. Their own Talmud calls Jesus a sorcerer and blasphemes Him with vitriol. Also, the apostles were Jewish and were brutally murdered for their faith. It makes zero sense that it was some psyop.
Your god said jews are his favorite. He magically impregnated a jew, making his son a jew.
Ok, then according to atheism scholars, atheism is wrong!!
jesus christ
is Lord. You reject Him yet misuse His Name. Oh my UltraMagaOK!!!!!