Outside of the Sacred texts, a unique testimony of Jesus existence written in 91AD - The Great Awakening

Outside of the Sacred texts, a unique testimony of Jesus existence written in 91AD (twitter.com) 𝕊ℙ𝕀ℝ𝕀𝕋𝕌𝔸𝕃 𝕎𝔸ℝ𝔽𝔸ℝ𝔼

posted 176 days ago by penisse 176 days ago by penisse +77 / -0

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– UltraMagaOK 1 point 176 days ago +1 / -0

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 Jesus’s 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 Josephus’s 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.

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– SwampRangers 4 points 176 days ago +4 / -0

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).

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– UltraMagaOK 2 points 175 days ago +2 / -0

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:

Richard Carrier: An independent scholar who has published research suggesting the entire Testimonium passage may be an accidental gloss by a Christian hand.
Philip Davies (deceased): A Professor of Biblical Studies who publicly argued that doubting historicity based on Josephus was a respectable academic position.
Raphael Lataster: An independent scholar with a PhD in Religious Studies, who has presented peer-reviewed assessments explaining his doubts regarding the historicity of Jesus and by extension the Josephus passages.
Ken Olson: A scholar who has argued that the version of the Testimonium Flavianum found in Eusebius is the source for all later manuscripts, suggesting a potential interpolation after Josephus's time.
Robert M. Price: A New Testament theologian and independent scholar who views the Testimonium as entirely inauthentic.
Thomas L. Thompson: A retired Professor of Biblical Studies who has expressed doubts about Josephus's mentions of figures relevant to the Bible.
Alice Whealey: A scholar whose work on the Syriac and Arabic versions of Josephus has been influential in dating the existing manuscripts and understanding potential interpolations.

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