Josephus and Jesus

I've been reading history for a very long time. I love this sort of thing. On an ancient Jewish historian and what he may have written about Jesus:

.... Josephus is our most important historical source for the Roman East—Syria, Galilee, and Judea—offering priceless insights into politics, warfare, religion, and daily life we’d otherwise never know.

I’ve taught about Josephus’s life and works for more than 20 years—first in secular settings like Macquarie University and the University of Sydney, and now at Wheaton College. But Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ by T.C. Schmidt, associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, has forced me to rewrite my lectures—and it might just have changed my mind. It seems that a controversial passage about Jesus’s resurrection might be original after all.

Of everything Josephus wrote, a single paragraph has been analyzed and debated more than all the rest. Those 90 words are even given their own name in scholarship: the Testimonium Flavianum—the testimony of Flavius Josephus about Jesus.

It appears in Book 18 of Jewish Antiquities. Here’s the standard translation from the Loeb Classical Library, with brackets around the words I’ve described for decades as “dodgy.” (Not exactly a technical term, but I always thought it apt.)

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 among 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. [For he appeared to them alive again on the third day, the divine prophets having foretold 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.

Since a famous 1987 article by Géza Vermes (professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University), the scholarly consensus about this paragraph has been that Josephus himself wrote a brief, neutral—or perhaps negative—remark about Jesus, which was later “improved” by a Christian scribe copying out Josephus’s works in the fourth, fifth, or sixth century. ....

Schmidt does a terrific job in the early chapters of his book chasing down all the manuscripts that contain the Testimonium Flavianum. Josephus wrote in Greek, but his work—at least parts of it—was quickly translated into Latin, as well as Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic. Unlike most classical and New Testament scholars, Schmidt seems comfortable swimming in all these linguistic oceans.

The upshot of his analysis is that we may have to rethink a key line. ....

I’ve spent my career trying to ensure my teaching about the historical Jesus stays within the bounds of mainstream (secular) scholarship, and Schmidt’s book is a major, serious challenge to the consensus on the Testimonium Flavianum. It won’t completely convince everyone, but if I’m any indication, it could partly convince many. I might owe my former students an apology. (more, summarizing the argument made in the book)

This appears at the end of the review: "Editors’ note: A generous donor has made Josephus and Jesus freely available in PDF format."

John Dickson, "I Might Owe My Students an Apology About Josephus," TGC, Jan. 19, 2026.