I recently found out about a new academic book published by T. C. Schmidt who is an associate professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, although he’s currently a visiting fellow at Princeton University. He has a PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University. The new book is called “Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ” and the publisher is Oxford University Press. The book is available for free thanks to a generous donor. Let’s find out what it’s about.
Well, the first report of this book that I found was on Dr. Mike Licona’s YouTube channel, where he has a 1 hour interview with the author, and he’s quite impressed with what the author found.
Here’s the video:
And the description says:
Josephus is often cited as one of the strongest non Christian sources for the historical Jesus. But is that really the case?
He mentions Jesus in two controversial passages… or does he? Scholars have debated this for decades, questioning what Josephus actually wrote, what may have been added later, and what it all means for the case of Jesus outside the Bible.
In this fascinating interview, Dr. Tom Schmidt helps us dive deep into the facts behind one of the most discussed ancient references to Jesus.
Most Christian apologists know about the two passages about the historical Jesus found in the writings of Josephus. These passages are important because they are written by a Jewish historian with good credentials, and they confirm the gospels description of the historical Jesus. But there’s always been some suspicion about one of them in particular. Anyway, let’s start with who Josephus is.
His full name is “Flavius Josephus” and he was born in 37 AD just a few years after Jesus died. Josephus was a Jewish priest, historian, and military leader whose writings provide some of the earliest references to Jesus from outside the New Testament.
Here are the passages:
This is the uncontroversial one:
when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, 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 as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned
That’s from Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 9, Section 1.
And this is the controversial one:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, [ 9 ] those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; [ 10 ] as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
That’s from Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, Section 3.
So people wonder, is Josephus just reporting what he’s hearing from other people, or is he getting this from eyewitnesses, or what?
Well, the new news is that there is reason from Schmidt’s book to believe that he had personal connections to the events surrounding Jesus’ trial and execution. The book uses textual analysis to argue for the authenticity of the passages above, because the language itself indicates personal knowledge. But there’s more.
Josephus repeatedly refers to knowing the “protoi” (the first or leading men) of Jerusalem. In his autobiography, he mentions that he started meeting with these elite figures—the chief priests and leaders—around 51 or 52 AD and these meetings were ongoing. Logically, many of these individuals would have been active two decades earlier during Jesus’ trial in 30-33 AD. Josephus uses the phrase “first men among us” about 50 times across his writings, often to denote groups he personally knew or interacted with. This suggests that when he attributes Jesus’ accusation to these “first men,” he’s drawing from firsthand accounts, not mere hearsay. But there’s even more!
I mentioned earlier how Josephus was in the military. Well, he describes his commanding officer during the Jewish-Roman war as “oldest of the high priests” in 68-69 AD, which implies that he would have been an adult around the time of Jesus. Schmidt makes the case that this commander is the son of the high priest mentioned in the Gospel of John who is the first to interrogate Jesus after his arrest. And that the commander would have been a potential witness or participant in the events surrounding the arrest. But there’s still more!
Schmidt says that Josephus’ own father, Matthias, who was born around 5-10 AD was a prominent priest in Jerusalem, and about 25 years old at the time of the crucifixion. Because the crucifixion happens at the festival of Passover, he would certainly have been nearby . It’s a required pilgrimage for Jews, especially for priests. So Josephus would have had access to someone who was there at the time of these rather important events. And it’s reasonable that he would have heard about them from his father or extended family.
So, this is pretty big stuff. Normally, I wouldn’t be overly excited about this, because I liked to see these things debated by scholars, like Mike Licona does with Bart Ehrman. So the real test would be to see if Mike thinks it’s good enough to raise in a debate, and how would someone like Ehrman respond to it. But because this was published by Oxford University Press by a professor with a PhD from Yale, I’m impressed. This is big news, and something for you to investigate, so you can make use of it yourself in your conversations. I think when you put discoveries like this together with ground-breaking research like Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, you can see that there is a trend of increasing support for the Bible’s reliability.
WINTERY KNIGHT 