Paul L. Maier comments on Josephus's references to Jesus in "Eusebius: A Church history" (2007). Any typos are my own as I had to re-type it:
Appendix 1: Eusebius' Citation of Josephus on Jesus
In 1.11 of his Church History Eusebius quotes the famous passage from Josephus's Antiquities (18.63) that mentions Jesus, the longest non-Christian reference to him in literature of the first century a.d. For comparison purposes, the passage is again reproduced here, with several extraordinary phrases that I have italicized:
About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a a man. For he was the achiever of extraordinary deeds and was a teacher of those who accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When he was indicted by the principal men among us and Pilate condemned him to be crucified, those who had come to love him originally did not cease to do so; for he appeared to them on the third day restored to life, as the prophets of the Deity had foretold these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, had not disappeared to this day.
In Antiquities 20.200, Josephus makes a second reference to Jesus in reporting the death of his half brother James, which is also cited by Eusebius in 2.23. Because Josephus remained a Jew who did not convert to Christianity, the preceding passage has provoked much scholarly literature, especially in view of the italicized phrases.
Scholars fall into three camps regarding this celebrated reference:
- It is entirely authentic, occurring as it does in the middle of Josephus's description of Pilate's administration and in all the manuscripts of Josephus.
- It is entirely a Christian forgery, since Origen aserted that Josephus never converted.
- It contains Christian interpolations in what was Josephus's authentic report on Jesus.
The first option would seem hopeless: no Jew could have claimed Jesus as the Messiah who rose from the dead without having converted to Christianity. The second is hardly tenable, since the passage occurs in all Greek manuscripts of Josephus and the undisputed reference to Jesus in 20.200 would doubtless have supplied more identifying material if this were the first mention of Jesus. Accordingly, a large majority of scholars today favor the third option, that the passage has been interpolated.
Jesus is portrayed as a "wise man', sophos aner in Greek, a phrase not used by Christians but employed by Josephus for such Old Testament figures as David and Solomon. Furthermore, the claim that Jesus won over "many of the Greeks" is not paralleled in the New Testament and thus is hardly a Christian addendum but rather something Josephus would have noted in his own day. And there is new evidence that the italicized phrases were indeed Christian interpolations.
In 1972, Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem announced his discovery of an Arabic manuscript of Josephus written by the tenth-century Melkite historian Agapius, in which the passage in question translates as follows:
At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many peole among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, perhaps he was the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day *
Clearly this version of the passage is expressed in a manner appropriate to a non-Christian Jew, and it corresponds almost precisely to previous scholarly projections of what Josephus actually wrote.
Accordingly, the interpolations in Josephus' text on Jesus must have come early, for Eusebius quotes the standard or traditional version when he published the first seven books of his Church History, probably before 300. That he did not detect the Christian interpolations, however, underscores the fact that he was not a critical historian. Since, however, he did not expand on the apologetic potential in this passage, using it only against forgeries of his own day, he may have had some qualms about its authenticity.
* While the final sentence is not in Agapius, Pines justifiably concludes that it was in the original Josephan text. See Schlomo Pines , An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and Its Implications (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1971)
