Optimism preserves our peace of mind by evoking positive expectations of future events and a false and deceiving euphoria about possible outcomes.

Who Lies Sleeping?

Manipulating the Good News 1

Christian Censorship in Josephus
Testimonium Flavianum

Abstract

If Nero persecuted Christians, it was the only example of Roman intolerance up to the Jewish War. Origen, the early Christian apologist, declared that the number of martyrs was inconsiderable. The Christian fathers, Acts, Justin and Origen all say little or nothing about the Christian persecutions of Nero, because the victims were predominantly Jews. Acts concludes by saying that Paul was not forbidden to teach in Rome, he did it with all boldness—and the year was around 64 AD. How Christians have manipulated their good news to create myths—aka lies—still told.

The passage on Jesus in Maimonides' Hilkhoth Melakhim repeatedly censored

Christian Censorship in Josephus

Christians are fond of quoting authorities to their bemused converts. It stems from the absolute authority they give the bible as the supposed infallible word of God, but they extend it to any written word that an evangelist choses—under the influence of the Holy Ghost—to quote. Usually the authorities quoted are simply other fundamentalist believers, but they expect their flock to take them on trust and being sheep, they do!

What, then, does the historian know about Jesus Christ? He knows, first and foremost, that the New Testament documents can be relied upon to give an accurate portrait of Him. And he knows that this portrait cannot be rationalized away by wishful thinking, philosophical presupposition, or literary maneuvering.
John Warwick Montgomer, History and Christianity.

This quotation is untrue in every particular, but being a Christian, it can be written without a blush. It is even only possible to write this rubbish because many of the historical records of Jesus have disappeared. Lost!

Who lost them? The Christians!

Flavius Josephus was the Roman name of Joseph ben Matthias. Josephus during the second half of the first century AD, produced two long and detailed histories of the Jews and the events leading to the Roman victory in the Jewish Wars, History of the Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, but has almost nothing to say about Jesus and even that is probably added by Christians to fill a prominant gap left by the censors.

Josephus as portrayed by H R Cook in the frontispiece of Whiston's book

Josephus was born in Jerusalem only a few years after the crucifixion. He shows an interest in the Jewish religious groups of the time. He tells us about the Jewish religious parties, about John the Baptist who Christians say was the herald of the Messiah and about Jesus’s brother, James, whose death he says was a reason for the start of the War in 66 AD. But he tells us nothing about the crucifixion or how it occurred. A man almost contemporaneous with Jesus and whose reputation was built on detailed histories of the Jewish people fails to mention him except in two brief passages, if they are genuine.

The precocious Josephus had studied all the Jewish religious sects before the age of 19 when he decided to become a Pharisee. He became a clerk to the Sanhedrin and at 26 went as an envoy to Rome to plead for some priests sent to Nero by Procurator Felix for trial. With the help of Poppaea, the Empress, who was possibly a Jewish proselyte or at least a godfearer, he succeeded. He was thus in Rome at much the same time as Paul, the Apostle to the gentiles.

Back in Jerusalem in 64 AD, revolt was simmering. Josephus was patriotic enough but had seen the power and extent of the Empire and knew that rebellion was futile. When the war broke out Josephus was made a general by the Sanhedrin and fought in Galilee with John of Gischala, the Zealot leader of the Galilaeans. Vespasian captured him after the town of Jotapata had been sieged for 47 days and decided to use him as an interpreter. Josephus got on well with Vespasian, predicting that he would become Emperor, which he did. Vespasian asked Josephus to write an account of the Jewish War for his campaign Triumph, a Roman victory parade. It was to be a warning to the people of the East not to try to defy Roman might.

Josephus wrote a draft in his native Aramaic which he called On the Capture of Jerusalem. This he polished into his book, the Jewish War. To gather his material, as the appointed historian of the Emperor, he was granted access to official archives, to the Reports of Roman Governors, the campaign diaries of Vespasian and Titus, the Emperor’s commentaries and he also corresponded with Agrippa I, for a short while King of Judaea before the war. His work had the ultimate stamp of approval—that of the Emperors themselves.

When Josephus uses official sources it is usually evident. He often tells us who filed the report from which he is quoting and transcribes it verbatim with little effort to paraphrase. Thus even non-signalled passages from official sources can be identified by their style. When writing from experience he is more informal, sounds less official and is less impersonal in the information he imparts.

Our present versions of the Jewish War mention none of Jesus, John the Baptist or Menehem, who revolted in 66 AD, but they do tell us of Judas of Galilee and Theudas, both messianic nationalist leaders. He records that the Jews merely protested when the Romans erected a statue of Caligula in the Temple, an act grossly contemptuous of the Jewish religion. This is a curiously subdued response for the fanatically religious Jews. In their outrage, history suggests they must surely have rioted, if not revolted.

Also strange is the omission of the fire in Rome in 64 AD which Nero attributed to the Christians. Such passages smack of censorship because Josephus usually fastidiously records the smallest detail of events relevant to his subject. It looks as though a whole chapter might have been erased by Christian censors because it depicted Jesus and his followers as fomenters of rebellion.

Testimonium Flavianum

Some manuscripts of the Jewish War contain a passage on Jesus extracted from Josephus’s companion volume, the Antiquities of the Jews, proving that someone has tampered with the original text, presumably in an attempt to fill the obvious gap left by the initial excision.

The inserted passage is favourable towards Jesus even though he was viewed, rightly or wrongly, by the Roman hierarchy as a terrorist. Josephus would have been taking an unlikely risk by making such an assessment. Remember he was a captive who had been adopted by Vespasian and given certain privileges in return for certain duties—privileges which could easily have been withdrawn. Domitian, who was Emperor when the Antiquities of the Jews was published, could have been no lover of Jesus or his followers. He even ordered all descendants of King David to be rounded up for questioning in an attempt to detect potential rebels and he banished two members of his own family for wanting to be Christians.

In versions of the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus, edited by Christians, are two passages describing Jesus. Neither is in the Jewish version of the Josephus’s Antiquities. The longer passage, the so called Testimonium Flavianum (18:3:3), is cited by Christians as independent confirmation of Jesus’ existence and resurrection. It reads:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man; for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and Gentiles. This was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many other wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of christians, so called from him, subsists to this time.
Josephus, Antiquities 18:3:3 (Lardner’s translation)

Church historians never doubted this testimonium of Josephus for over a millennium. As Josephus was a Jew, it was considered all the more valuable, and that he nevertheless himself still did not believe in Jesus was even more confirming evidence of the power of the redemption of Christ.

In so far as he confesses Christ, acknowledging him to be the son of God, he was compelled and constrained to do so solely by the power of God.
Cardinal Baronius, 1588

The church claimed even an unbeliever and an adversary of the faith had to confess to its truth! Quite why is hard to say. It is like the soldiers who were present at the crucifixion in Matthew. That such remarkable witnesses can nevertheless not believe seems to be a failure of something in the redeeming powers of the Christ, rather than the opposite. But Christians are still not too critical, or even thoughtful.

Robert Eisler in The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist examined the “Testimonium Flavianum” in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews that the Churches had used since Eusebius as independednt, that is extra-biblical, evidence of Jesus as Christ. Medieval Jews are on record as saying their own Hebrew manuscripts of Antiquities did not contain this passage. Of course, the Christians claimed the passage had been erased, and indeed it had been in many instances. Many Jews were ready to accept it as the work of Josephus, but they regarded him as a careerist and opportunist, who possibly inserted it because some members of the Flavian family were influenced by Christianity. Others noted that, if the testimony were indeed authentic, it could only be the work of a Christian, and whether it was Josephus seeking to impress Christians or Eusebius it did not matter.

Giphanius, Hubert van Giffen, Protestant philologist and lawyer, is said to be the first Christian scholar to declare the testimonium a forgery, though there is no such written claim in his own work. It was a dangerous thing to say. The first extant printed questioning of the testimonium was by the Lutheran theologian, Lucas Osiander. He regarded the Josephus passage as entirely spurious. Snellius, Professor Sebastian Schnell, was the next. Critics of the passage were chiefly philologists while its defenders were theologians. A Portugese rabbi, Rabbi Lusitanus, first pointed out that the testimonium interrupts the logical structure of the narrative, and must therefore be regarded as an interpolation. According to Pastor Johannes Muller, Lusitanus states:

Josephus telleth first how Pilate hath given cause for rebellion whereupon the text should continue to say how about the same time still another tumult happened unto the Jews, but because in between them is told the history of Jesus, the text doeth not hang together, the other tumult pointeth to the first.

The French Huguenot Tanneguy Lefevre argues in quite a similar strain:

To speak in plain Latin, this interpolation could not have been more ineptly inserted anywhere else.

In this part of the text two calamities (thoruboi) are mentioned. Josephus ends the first with:

And so the riot (stasis) ceased.

The second, described in chapter 5, he connects with the first, saying:

And about the same time another calamity disturbed the Jews.

A thorough examination of the validity of this paragraph in Josephus was made by Nathaniel Lardner, according to a correspondent, John Seed, writing Credibility of the Gospel History in the 1730s and 40s. He was a Christian but a liberal religious dissenter, even something of an early Unitarian. His Works were published in 11 volumes in London in 1788 and there were later editions. Since Lardner, many other scholars have written about it, so no Christian apologist can plead ignorance of their findings. Eichstadt (1814) and Niese (1893-94) repeated Lefevre’s argument, and Professor Norden again in the twentieth century. Now, only scholars speaking for the churches, that is scholars who eschew scholarship when it comes to their belief, regard the passage as genuine. The truth is, it is a forgery. Why should we accuse it of being a forgery?

The church fathers liked to quote passages that supported Christianity, yet not one of them quoted this passage in defence of Christianity until Eusebius did in the fourth century, about 330 AD, though the works of Josephus were famous. Previous Christian writers make no reference to Josephus’s commendation of Jesus even when it would have suited them, as they must surely have done had it existed. Eusebius (died c 340) quoted it three times, but Origen (died c 254), although he was the first scholar the church had and one of the best, writing in about 250 AD long before Eusebius, is clear in two passages that the Antiquities did not note Jesus as the Christ. He quotes other parts of Josephus but never this passage. Indeed, he puzzled:
Though he [Josephus] did not admit our Jesus to be the Christ he none the less gave witness to so much righteousness in James.
Elsewhere adding:
…although [Josephus] disbelieved in Jesus as Christ.
He was explicit about it, and could hardly have been explicit unless Josephus had said so explicitly. In other words, it was not simply an omission of the testimonium from the text but the negative of it. Nor could it have been a doubtful inference from his saying “Jesus was called the Christ”, perhaps implying he was not, because no church man has made that inference from Matthew where the same expression is found. Whatever Origen read in his edition cannot have been the text as it was the century after and now is, but quite a different text, hostile to Jesus and the Christians. Josephus had flatterred Vespasian as the messiah, and depended upon it for his life, so it seems quite unlikely that he would have risked it by a concurrent denial. Plainly Origen’s version of Josephus’s works did not have the passage to which we are referring, but by 330 AD the version used by Eusebius did. Jerome’s Latin version has the insertion but it is less assertive, rendering “He was the Messiah” by “He was believed to be the Messiah”. It shows that the text of Josephus has been altered. Who would or could have altered it?—only Christians. So, there is no proof of the testimony before Christianity was the state religion, and able to suppress hostile and contrary writings, a power conferred by an edict of Constantine and re-enacted by the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian after Julian’s Pagan revival. Christians even imposed laws requiring capital punishment for anyone who concealed possession of writings hostile to Christianity. Christians were in a position to censor books, even those that had already been issued, and because books were expensive, being hand copied, the owners, whether individuals, booksellers, or libraries and synagogues, would rather they were altered so that they could retain them than let them be confiscated and burned, or risk hiding them with worse consequences. Many glosses and marginal notes in the manuscripts of Antiquities we still have show every one of them, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and others were owned by Christians.
The passage is amid stories about calamities that have befallen the Jews. This is not a calamity as it stands, but has been inserted instead of the original piece which will have described Jesus’s failed rebellion—certainly a calamity.
Josephus says this man performed “wonderful works” yet fails to describe any one of them though he quotes the miracles of others.
The passage is too pro-Christian. Josephus says that Jesus was the Christ, an unlikely statement for him to have made, not only because he was a Pharisaic Jew but also because he was critical of messianic movements. Josephus, a Jew in the pay of the Roman Emperor and at his mercy as a captive, could not possibly praise a man killed—as far as the Romans knew—as a rebel and a threat to Rome. Only a Christian could write this. So, what do we find? Not that the passage was forged but, Christians declare Josephus to be a secret Christian!
For the same reasons Josephus would not have said the Christian religion was the “truth”. Josephus was effectively a prisoner of the Romans, given a privileged position because he flattered the Roman general, Vespasian, who later became emperor, and because Vespasian found him useful. He would have been courting personal disaster to say that the followers of a crucified rebel told the “truth” about him when he was under the guardianship of the general who put down the massive Jewish rebellion in 68 AD.
Stating that the sect of Christians “…subsists to this time”, implies it was written a considerable time after the events he was describing. Conceivably, such a point could have been made when Josephus wrote about 60 years later, but it would have matched the time when Eusebius wrote better.

Josephus’s work will have referred to Jesus but unfavourably. Because the passage was not quoted even in an attenuated form, we can conclude that the reference was too defamatory for Christian bishops to quote. Christian redactors found unsuitable references to Jesus, and interpolated brief but suitable references based purely on Christian belief. The passage sounds much like Josephus in style. If it is a bald insertion it has been written in a style compatible with Josephus’s, but it could be a skilful redaction of a genuine passage. Phrases such as “tribe of Christians” and “wise man” which are typical of Josephus are possibly relics of the original. Christian editors who Christianised the text might have cleverly retained these phrases to keep the flavour of Josephus.

The passage giving testimony to Jesus in Antiquities comes during a catalogue of calamities that the Jews experienced at the time of Pilate taking office. Josephus seems here to be drawing upon official sources and lists Pilate’s raising of the standards in Jerusalem and his taking Temple funds to finance the construction of an aqueduct into the city. Then he mentions Jesus and concludes with two incidents in Rome that occurred, according to Tacitus, in 19 AD. This chronology implies that Pilate was governor earlier, and Jesus was active much earlier, than Christians today believe.

The next section of Antiquities has skipped almost two decades to a revolt led by “The Egyptian” (the one that Paul was mistaken for in Acts) in Samaria in 35 AD. So two tumults in Jerusalem and two incidents in Rome bracket a short paragraph praising Jesus, then there is a jump forward of 15 years to the next strand of the story. Something looks amiss.

Following the testimonial to Jesus, the first of the two incidents in Rome is introduced by:

About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder…

but there follows a description of a woman tricked into intercourse with a man pretending to be a god in the Temple of Isis in Rome, a passage eight times longer than that allocated to Jesus and of no apparent relevance to the Jews, despite its introduction. The only relevance to the story of Jesus was that the conniving Priests of Isis were crucified by Tiberius, although it might have been included as a satirical commentary on the myth, new at the time, that Jesus was born of a virgin. Logic requires this introduction to be that of a passage about the tumult accompanying the arrest of Jesus and described in the gospels. This section was deleted in some copies of Josephus and strongly edited and put forward in others so that the ministry of Jesus would not be described as a calamity.

Eisler says the word “tumult” has been deleted by a Christian censor. Because something was deleted, it must have been hostile to Christianity. Many such deletions made in Jewish works, so it is not at all peculiar. Jesus was hanged because he led a rebellion. That is clear from the gospels. What Christian textual analysts of the events in Josephus will not consider let alone credit is that the original reference to Jesus here was a reference to a tumult. Eisler suggests a minimum of hostile text that deleted, shown here by ellipses, left the existing version. He reconstructs the passage in this way:

Now about this time arose an occasion for new disturbances, a certain Jesus, a wizard of a man, if indeed he may be called a man, who was the most monstrous of all men, whom his disciples call a son of God, as having done wonders such as no man hath ever yet done … He was in fact a teacher of astonishing tricks to such men as accept the abnormal with delight … And he seduced many also of the Greek nation and was regarded by them as the Messiah … And when, on the indictment of the principal men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to the cross, still those who before had admired him did not cease to rave. For it seemed to them that having been dead for three days, he had appeared to them alive again, as the divinely-inspired prophets had foretold—these and ten thousand other wonderful things—concerning him. And even now the race of those who are called messianists (christiani) after him is not extinct.

Because the passage sounds like the work of a Christian, it must have been added to Antiquities some time between Origen and Eusebius, when Christians got the power to edit books. After the Christians became supreme in the reign of Constantine they evidently planted evidence on Josephus, turning the leading Jewish historian of his day into a witness for Jesus as Christ. Eusebius is one of the few Christians to admit that lying for the advancement of the church was acceptable (though Paul started it all). He most likely interpolated this passage into Josephus.

Some Christians admit that Josephus’s quotation about Jesus is “contested”, but do not say what they mean, and otherwise treat the quotation as authentic. Contested means that the majority of scholars since the early 1800s have rejected the entire Testimonium Flavianum as a Christian insertion, but Christian clergy and preachers, disdainful of honesty, still say it is genuine. Even though Christians of all denominations are aware that the passage is suspected, by the best experts, of being a forgery, they still quote it in support of their Jesus. This is not only dishonest, it is exploiting the Christian’s self-styled virtue of being truthful to spread lies. They follow their masters Paul and Eusebius in using lies to propagate their own “truth”. The people fooled by this are mainly ignorant. The intelligent will cringe at the dishonesty involved and disregard Christian “evidence”.

It is remarkable how the preconceived version of Jesus that Christians over the years have manufactured by such steps as this censoring of Josephus holds them in thrall. The obvious unbuttered truth is that Jesus was hanged as a rebel, and here in Josephus the obvious explnation of the facts is that a reference to it has been excised and a passage supporting the Christian myth inserted. The change was necessitated because it was hostile, and that is what Origen says long before Eusebius reports something quite different.

Antiquities, does mention both John the Baptist and James, the brother of Jesus. Josephus also, in passing, mentions Jesus later in Antiquities:

So he [Ananus, son of Ananus the high priest] assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before him the brother of Jesus, he who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others (or some of his companions) and when he had formed an accusation against them, he delivered them to be stoned.
Antiquities 20:9:1

Many scholars think this too is forged. If not, it confirms that a previous mention had been made of Jesus. An unfavourable reference to Jesus in the original version must have been excised to render it publishable but Christian copyists, finding that their crudely censored versions contained no reference to Jesus felt obliged to insert one. So what Origen could not see, Eusebius could.

More space is devoted to John the Baptist in our editions of the Antiquities than to the master whose coming the gospels assure us he was proclaiming. A section covering the career of Jesus in considerably more detail than the short passage we now have must have been deleted.

Page Tags: Bible Fraud, Manipulating the Good News, Censorship, Messianic Judaism, Messianic Jews, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Jewish, Jews, Roman, Fraud, Rome, Missing Records

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.